.m4a file won’t upload

I just installed a new test site: WordPress 6.5.3 with the default Twenty Twenty-Four theme and no plugin active.

I can upload .m4a files straightway without tweaking anything.

Something in your hosting environment or WordPress setup is preventing that.

What message is displayed when you try to upload such a file?

Are there any anomalies under Tools > Site Health?

Can you upload other files (such as images) without any problems?

There is no message. No error under tools-> site health

It says crunching, the file names goes strange format https://snipboard.io/ZBUoST.jpg and it doesn’t upload.

I can upload .jpg, .pdf, .mp3. Although these also give the strange crunching file_name format and don’t stop ‘crunching’ but the file appears in the media upload, so the upload worked.

If you give the file a very simple file name like “test.m4a” will it work? What is the original file name?

Could you test the whole thing without any plugins? Perhaps one of them is interfering with the upload process.

I deactived all the plugins. Changed it to 123.m4a and it doesn’t work.

Another install I have I tried to upload and I get the error https://snipboard.io/D30X79.jpg

Should it work by default? Why doesn’t it work?

An upload like this works for me without any problems. I took a file from https://filesamples.com/formats/m4a and uploaded it to WordPress without any plugins. Works without any problems. Please also test with this file.

You can see the “Remote upload” field in your screenshot. Did you insert the file there? Where does this plugin come from? It is not WordPress standard and should come from a plugin.

This file worked. On the one with the ‘remote upload’ no problem.

On the new website I installed it still gets stuck on crunching https://snipboard.io/Nid3y0.jpg but it shows in the backend.

What could be wrong with the file I’m trying to upload? Here are the properties: https://snipboard.io/owBMRa.jpg

My guess would be that meta information in the file is the problem. If you have the chance, I would recommend editing the file again before uploading it to WordPress. I never use this format, but I’ve just seen that there are online editors for it. Ideally, you can delete, edit or overwrite the meta information there.

What do you mean by the meta info?

This is a recording of a speech.

How would I change the meta info?

Images as well as audio files contain further information in addition to the audio or image data – so called meta-data. In the case of images, this can be information about the camera or software used, for example, as well as a title for the image. Audio files such as those in m4a format also contain this information.

As already mentioned, I am not familiar with the m4a format, but I have seen that there is meta information in the files and consider this to be the cause of your problem. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to edit them. You would have to research that yourself. It is not part of the WordPress core to edit such information in files, WordPress only reads them when uploading.

Can you show me what the meta info is? Where do I see it?

I’m not sure what you mean. Where is it in the properties?

I really appreciate your help and advice.

I need to upload about 1,500 files onto the site – either .mp3 or .m4a – which would be better for speed? Will it slow the speed? Is there a way to optimize them?

Or would it be better to store them externally?

As already mentioned several times above, I am not familiar with the m4a format. With the tools also mentioned above, you can edit these files – and thus also see the metadata in them.

Whether mp3 or m4a hardly matters for the speed of the website itself. From today’s perspective, the files are quite small anyway. The decisive factor for the number of files is rather the traffic they consume during download. Your hosting must be able to cope with this. Talk to your hoster’s support team about this.