diff --git a/RELEASENOTES.md b/RELEASENOTES.md
index ae2a28d49b..dcd46f2192 100644
--- a/RELEASENOTES.md
+++ b/RELEASENOTES.md
@@ -35,6 +35,10 @@
         views to be used with other `Player` implementations, and removes the
         dependency from the UI module to the ExoPlayer module. This is a
         breaking change.
+*   HLS:
+    *   Fallback to chunkful preparation if the playlist CODECS attribute
+        does not contain the audio codec
+        ([#10065](https://github.com/google/ExoPlayer/issues/10065)).
 *   RTSP:
     *   Add RTP reader for MPEG4
         ([#35](https://github.com/androidx/media/pull/35))
diff --git a/libraries/exoplayer_hls/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/hls/HlsMediaPeriod.java b/libraries/exoplayer_hls/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/hls/HlsMediaPeriod.java
index b5822578f8..101bb7a2ed 100644
--- a/libraries/exoplayer_hls/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/hls/HlsMediaPeriod.java
+++ b/libraries/exoplayer_hls/src/main/java/androidx/media3/exoplayer/hls/HlsMediaPeriod.java
@@ -646,7 +646,8 @@ private void buildAndPrepareMainSampleStreamWrapper(
     int numberOfVideoCodecs = Util.getCodecCountOfType(codecs, C.TRACK_TYPE_VIDEO);
     int numberOfAudioCodecs = Util.getCodecCountOfType(codecs, C.TRACK_TYPE_AUDIO);
     boolean codecsStringAllowsChunklessPreparation =
-        numberOfAudioCodecs <= 1
+        (numberOfAudioCodecs == 1
+                || (numberOfAudioCodecs == 0 && multivariantPlaylist.audios.isEmpty()))
             && numberOfVideoCodecs <= 1
             && numberOfAudioCodecs + numberOfVideoCodecs > 0;
     @C.TrackType