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Audio file info in Get Info window

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2023 9:30 am
by ghobish
Most of the time, the Get Info window will display useful information of WAV files (less often, AIFF and MP3 info) like number of channels, sample rate and bit depth. But often, it will not show any of this info at all, and it seems pretty random- I can't determine a significant difference in format or source of the file to explain this, and it seems sometimes the same file will or won't display that info depending on how he Mac OS is feeling that day.

Any theories?

(I'm currently in MacOS 12.6.3 on a Mac Studio M1 Max, but I've been randomly seeing this for years.)

Re: Audio file info in Get Info window

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2023 4:02 pm
by ghobish
Anybody???

Re: Audio file info in Get Info window

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2023 5:29 pm
by bayswater
Still seeing this work consistently on older OS versions for Wav, M4A etc. I stop at 10.14.6. Maybe of late Apple has deemed it unnecessary for the typical user to know these things

Could it depend on the default app specified to open the file? Or the file type suffix? There must be something that prompts the finder to look at the audio file header to find this info. Presumably it doesn't look for this info in every file. If the file type or default app is something unusual, would the Finder know to look at the header, or even where to find a header?

Re: Audio file info in Get Info window

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2023 5:40 pm
by ghobish
bayswater wrote: Mon Feb 27, 2023 5:29 pm Still seeing this work consistently on older OS versions for Wav, M4A etc. I stop at 10.14.6. Maybe of late Apple has deemed it unnecessary for the typical user to know these things

Could it depend on the default app specified to open the file? Or the file type suffix? There must be something that prompts the finder to look at the audio file header to find this info. Presumably it doesn't look for this info in every file. If the file type or default app is something unusual, would the Finder know to look at the header, or even where to find a header?
Good thoughts, but it worked in Monterey when I first got my Mac Studio in October just fine, it just seems to have stopped a couple of weeks ago. Filetypes/ sources/ default apps are the same as they always have been.

For the time being I've gotten a small app. MediaInfo, that I can drop a file on an alias on my desktop and get the info on any media file, but it sure was convenient before. Apparently Get Info still works as it used to on Quicktme movie files.