HE-AAC/M4A recording causes audio dropouts, playback failure and project-close hangs — resolved by converting to WAV

Hi,

Had a frustrating issue with Premiere this morning and thought it was worth reporting, as I eventually found a workaround.

Yesterday afternoon I added a short voice recording made on my Pixel 10a using Google’s Recorder app. First time using it, so I hadn’t changed any settings. Everything seemed fine until I came back to the project this morning.

One of the music tracks would play for a few seconds and then go silent. Pressing the spacebar to pause and play brought it back briefly, then it would disappear again. Eventually the whole sequence stopped playing or previewing.

Strangely, I could still save the project, but trying to close it froze Premiere and I had to force-quit.

I restarted the Mac a couple of times and reverted Premiere from 26.5.2 to 26.5.1, but the problem was still there.

I used ChatGPT to help troubleshoot and read through the crash reports, which helped narrow the suspect down to the phone recording. I tried converting it in Media Encoder, but that froze too and needed force-quitting. I then converted it to WAV using an online converter, replaced it in Premiere, and everything has been working fine since. Go figure!

My setup is:

• Mac Studio, M1 Max, 32 GB RAM.

• macOS 15.4.1.

• Premiere 26.5.2 initially, then 26.5.1.

• Media Encoder 26.5.2.

The original recording is an M4A. QuickTime shows MPEG-4 HE-AAC, 48 kHz, mono, 48.10 kbit/s. It’s only about 53 KB.

From ChatGPT’s reading of the reports, Premiere’s audio-prefetch thread was inside mc_dec_aac, while the main thread was waiting for playback tasks to finish during project closure. Media Encoder also had a thread inside mc_dec_aac. Both reports were generated when I force-quit the apps after they froze. Obviously that’s an interpretation, so it would be useful for Adobe to check the reports themselves.

I can’t say for certain whether there’s something wrong with the recording or Adobe’s handling of it, but replacing it with WAV seems to have sorted it. The odd part was that it initially affected a completely separate music track.

Anyone else had this with Google Recorder files or HE-AAC? Would be good to know whether it’s a known issue.

I can provide the original recording, both crash reports and the QuickTime info screenshot privately to Adobe staff if helpful.

Thanks!