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Apple Core Audio dependency

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Jeremy Herbison edited this page Feb 24, 2025 · 4 revisions

For AAC and Apple Lossless (ALAC) support on Windows, the Apple extension (AudioWorks.Extensions.Apple) requires Apple's Core Audio library. I cannot redistribute this binary with AudioWorks due to licensing restrictions, but I can tell you how to get it.

Options:

Just install iTunes

iTunes is no longer maintained by Apple, but as of Feburary 2025 it is still available from their website.

  1. Go to the iTunes download page, ignore the recommendation to visit the Windows Store, scroll down to Looking for other versions and download iTunes64Setup.exe.

Extract the required libraries using a script

  1. Download iTunes as above. I recommend you get both the 64-bit and 32-bit versions.
  2. Download this script.
  3. Install 7-Zip.
  4. Open a command prompt in a directory containing both the above script and the iTunes installer(s), and then run the script. It will extract the files to folders named QTfiles64 and/or QTfiles.
  5. Copy the contents of these folders to C:\Program Files\iTunes and C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes, respectively.

Note: If you have the latest Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributables installed (both X86 and X64 versions), you can trim the above directories further. These are technically all that needs to be present in the iTunes directory, as long as the redist is installed system-wide:

  • ASL.dll
  • CoreAudioToolbox.dll
  • CoreFoundation.dll
  • icudt62.dll
  • libdispatch.dll
  • libicuin.dll
  • libicuuc.dll
  • objc.dll

Install Apple Application Support

If you have an older iTunes (<= 12.10.8.5) iCloud or QuickTime installer, you can extract AppleApplicationSupport64.msi and/or AppleApplicationSupport64.msi (32-bit version) from the .exe using 7-zip, then just install that. AudioWorks will locate the required libraries under C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple.

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