Quite simply it cannot do so because it cannot find ffmpeg - and neither can the user, according to multiple posts in this forum. I am greatly surprised at this: the issue of not being able to locate ffmpeg in this version of Audacity was first reported some weeks ago and is still not fixed. Why is this ?
Works fine for me on Windows 10 with 3.6.4 and latest alpha test build for 3.7.0
Peter
Canāt quite see how that helps those of us who are not using Windows solve the problem. This is like the traditional response from a help-desk (I know; I used to run a global one, but that was 40 years agoā¦): āItās your problem because it runs OK hereā, somewhat missing the point.
I was merely pointing out (for the benefit of any Muse QA folk who might be reading here) that is not an issue on Windows - which helps them narrow down their lines of enquiry and investigation.
And BTW Iām a Windows user (no Linux engine and no desire to have one) 
If you ever explore Museās GitHub issues log you will see many posts which exclude bugs happening on particular OSs. In fact they even have a Linux flag for Linux-only bugs and a Mac flag too - but not one for windows
Yeah me too, after I retired 17 years ago I worked a a Forum Elf on the old Audacity Forum and later continued when I joined the old Audacity Team - and I still continue a bit now that Muse have taken over the project.
Itās important to know that this Forum is not a āhelp deskā in the traditional sense of the word, rather itās a place where users come to help other users. Muse provide the wherewithal for this Forum but they donāt really provide help-desk facilities,
Sorry if it came across like that, it wasnāt meant to.
Peter.
It āsort ofā works for me with Audacity 3.6.4 on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, though it does produce a warning:
Could not open file /filepath/filename.m4a: Incorrect filetype.
before it imports the file.
Which distro/Linux version are you using?
Iām using Mint 22, based on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, running the AppImage version of Audacity 3.6.4. The error message says that the file (nnn.m4a) is an Advanced Audio Coding file, which is an incorrect file type (which must impress the developers of the AAC standard, but not a lot) and cannot be opened unless ffmpeg is installed - which a terminal instance tells me it most certainly is. No .m4a file can be opened/imported.
I havenāt tried removing ffmpeg and re-installing it as the removal step will also remove get-iplayer, which I prefer not to do.
Audacity Prefrences, ffmpeg locate function, did tell me it couldnāt find file ālibavformat.so.*ā. I was able to browse and point it to a version named ālibavformat.so.60ā but Audacity still couldnāt find ffmpeg.
I can confirm that Audacity fails to load FFmpeg on Mint 22. Iāll log it as a bug.
Also, Audacity 3.6.4 AppImage crashes for me on exit.
Bugs logged:
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Th unofficial version from ppa doesnt suffer of this problem. I know, that is not ideal to install from ppas, but Panda Jim make quality work. I havenāt encountered any bugs that the official AppImage version doesnāt have. In fact, it seems to have fewer issues, like the one mentioned here.