I know MC still can not transcode to m4a and retain tags, which is unfortunate but a reality, so I tried DBpoweramp which can convert from my favorite format, Monkey's Audio directly to Apple Lossless.
Unfortunately, using two different computers, the resulting .m4a file will not play when MC13 is set up correctly to play using DC-Bass source. I'm going to try playing the DBPoweramp m4a file on my home PC which will play m4a in order to narrow down the problem.
DC