decodeAudioData issue in Chrome - react-native

Question

I have some simple web react-native code that opens a local audio file and then prints the duration.
var reader = new FileReader();
reader.onload = function (event) {
var context = new AudioContext();
var data = event.target.result
context.decodeAudioData(data, function (buffer) {
console.log(buffer.duration);
});
};
reader.readAsArrayBuffer(files[0]);
files[0] has the type File
The code is working in Safari 15.6.1 but will not work in Chrome 108 for .aif filetypes. If I try to run in Chrome with the same local .aif audio file, I get the following error message:
DOMException: Failed to execute 'decodeAudioData' on
'BaseAudioContext': Unable to decode audio data
What causes Chrome to break with .aif file types and what's the fix?

Answer 1

AIFF filetype variants have not been supported on many browsers for a while (circa 2019). Chrome, Firefox and Edge definitely ceased support around that time or earlier.
As AIFF is an Apple media format it is still supported by Safari, macOS and iOS.
There maybe a possibility to use 3rd party libraries (like Aurora.js) to get browsers to download codecs to open the AIFF formats. Of course that would require permissions etc. by end user.