Playing Apple movpkg files in Audirvana

I’ve spent the last two hours unsuccessfully trying to get an iTunes purchase/download to play in Audirvana. It’s a .movpkg file extension. Anyone know how to get Audirvana to recognize it?

Audirvana does not support this file type. You can play in Apple Music. You will need to convert it to FLAC or Apple Lossless to play in Audirvana. Think Apple Music is one of the very few players that support this Apple format for downloads of variable rate hires file.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255041780?sortBy=best

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Thanks. Is there an easy way to convert it to Apple Lossless? I’m beginning to hate Apple.

Thanks for link but not much help. Is there a way of converting the .movpkg file to something Audirvana can handle? I read that .movpkg is what Apple uses for hi-res music. But I thought I had purchased lossy iTunes music. Does iTunes even have hi-res?

It’s a format for Apple Music files stored for offline playback (and also movies/tv shows in Apple TV) It is designed to stop people from copying the downloaded files and playing in something else and keeping.

As Apple would jump on any official converters with a lawsuit I would think the only converters are likely to be found on torrenting sites or GitHub. I think the Apple files will also be encrypted making it difficult.

Apple will not sell lossless/hir res in the music store only as part of Apple Music so for them it keeps subscribers locked in to the Apple Music ecosystem. I might add Qobuz et al encrypt their streaming downloads also, otherwise a streaming service would be used to rip off the music.

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About lossless audio in Apple Music

Our commitment to your listening experience

Apple Music delivers an unparalleled listening experience that’s defined by the highest standards of audio quality. We developed our own implementation of AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) that delivers audio that’s virtually indistinguishable from the original studio recording. We also introduced Apple Digital Masters to deliver the highest-quality recordings. And now, we’re offering Apple Music subscribers the additional option to access our entire catalog encoded using lossless audio compression at no extra cost.
About lossless audio in Apple Music - Apple Support

The .mp4a file format is what Apple uses for Apple Lossless ‘Digital Masters’ and this is supported by Audirvana… It’s all about Digital Rights Management (DRM) for Apple platforms and symbiotic content ecosystems.
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Figured it out with some forum help. You have to disable high resolution downloads. In the Apple Music app you use the Music dropdown menu, go to settings, then playback. Under Audio Quality choose High Quality AAC 256 kbps. After doing this, it downloaded as an m4a file and this time I was able to add it to my Audirvana library. But before I could do that I spent about an hour or more in the Apple Music app searching for the purchased album, as it wasn’t showing up as part of my purchased collection. Turns out it was hidden (yes Apple hides your stuff from you). I tried to unhide it yesterday but it wasn’t showing up as hidden. Today it did. There was some sort of lag apparently. Anyway, what a pain this has been when all I wanted to do was download music, add to Audirvana, and play—like I do with every other site I buy music from. Will probably never buy music from Apple again. Another issue with Apple is that some music I bought from them years ago has disappeared. The only reason I bought music from Apple this time is that I was given a gift card.

Thanks for the help and happy new year.

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You still have access to that U2 free download music from Apple years ago that was in your library without you wanted it?? :slight_smile:

Ha ha still there. Couldn’t remember buying it.

It was free for Apple people, wanted or not :flushed:

It was probably the biggest mistake ever made by U2 in dealing with Apple :joy: