Supported Audio Formats

Submariner uses system APIs to play back audio. This means it's subject to whatever macOS supports. Apple provides a list of what was supported in 10.5. Basically, your typical MP3, AAC, ALAC, Wave, AC-3, and a bunch of legacy formats. In addition to these formats, FLAC is supported since about 10.13, and Opus and Vorbis in Ogg containers in 15.4.

(Prior to this 15.4, macOS starting in 12 supported Opus, but only in CAF or WebM files, not in the normal Ogg container format - practically, this means existing Opus files weren't supported without changing their container.)

Note that your server can transcode audio into a supported format (or lower bitrate, to save bandwidth). Not all servers implement this, but at least Subsonic and Navidrome do. Consult the documentation for your implementation.

Technical details

The results of AudioFileGetGlobalInfo on macOS 13.4:

Uniform Type Identifiers

(
    "com.apple.mpeg-4-ringtone",
    "public.aiff-audio",
    "public.mp4a-loas",
    "com.apple.m4a-audio",
    "public.3gpp2",
    "public.aac-audio",
    "com.apple.coreaudio-format",
    "public.ac3-audio",
    "public.au-audio",
    "public.mpeg-4",
    "public.enhanced-ac3-audio",
    "public.ulaw-audio",
    "org.3gpp.adaptive-multi-rate-audio",
    "public.aifc-audio",
    "public.mpeg-4-audiobooks",
    "public.3gpp",
    "com.digidesign.sd2-audio",
    "com.sony.wave64",
    "public.mpeg-4-audio",
    "public.mp2",
    "org.xiph.flac",
    "public.mp1",
    "public.mp3",
    "com.microsoft.waveform-audio"
)

File extensions

(
    m1a,
    adts,
    snd,
    aif,
    3gpp,
    aac,
    caff,
    ac3,
    aiff,
    3gp2,
    w64,
    caf,
    flac,
    mp1,
    mpa,
    3gp,
    mp2,
    au,
    wav,
    mov,
    aifc,
    3g2,
    mp3,
    m2a,
    mpg4,
    eac3,
    mp4,
    m4a,
    mpeg,
    loas,
    ec3,
    xhe,
    latm,
    m4b,
    m4r,
    amr,
    sd2,
    qt
)

MIME types

(
    "audio/vnd.wave",
    "audio/mp3",
    "audio/mpeg3",
    "audio/x-sd2",
    "audio/x-caf",
    "audio/mpeg",
    "audio/x-mpeg3",
    "audio/wav",
    "audio/flac",
    "audio/x-ac3",
    "audio/x-mpg",
    "audio/mp4",
    "audio/x-wav",
    "audio/x-aiff",
    "audio/x-eac3",
    "audio/eac3",
    "audio/usac",
    "audio/x-mpeg",
    "audio/wave",
    "audio/au",
    "audio/x-mp3",
    "audio/AMR",
    "audio/x-m4r",
    "audio/aiff",
    "audio/3gpp2",
    "audio/aac",
    "audio/mpg",
    "audio/ac3",
    "audio/x-m4b",
    "audio/x-aac",
    "audio/3gpp",
    "audio/basic",
    "audio/x-m4a",
    "audio/snd"
)