unsuccessful import from GarageBand

[broncosmitty]

I have a long single GarageBand ('09, ver. 5.1) track that I want to manipulate in Audacity (1.3.8) on my imac (Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz).

I get the message "Error opening file" when I attempt to just open the GarageBand file, an error saying "Audacity did not recognize the type of file..." when just plain importing it, an upon Importing the GarageBand file as Raw Data, nothing shows up on the sound palette.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

broncosmitty

[kozikowski]

Open the file in QuickTime Player and Command-I to get the INFO panel. What does that say, what kind of file?

You should not be in Audacity 1.2. 1.2 is not supported on modern Macs. Get Audacity 1.3.12 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_mac

If Garage Band is expecting to send the music directly to iTunes, it may be in the Apple AAC format. You can get iTunes to translate into WAV. Let us know. Does Garage Band have an export option list? Pick AIFF or even better WAV format.

Koz

[broncosmitty]

I might have solved the problem. I saved the GarageBand file as an ACC file, and Audacity liked that much better.

I am in a working environment that disallows download from many sites, including Soundforge. I found the 1.3.8 (unicode) version on the Apple.com site. That worked for a download.


Thanks for the reply,

broncosmitty

[kozikowski]

AAC, maybe? Advanced Audio Coding?

Koz

[broncosmitty]

Yes, AAC.

Broncosmitty

[benallen]

What exactly is AAC and why is it better than MP3?

[Gale Andrews]

What exactly is AAC and why is it better than MP3?

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/M4A



Gale

[waxcylinder]

What exactly is AAC and why is it better than MP3?

AAC is Apple's compressed format. It is generally reckoned to give better audio quality than MP3 for the same compression rates and filesizes (this diffenec declines when less compression is used - i.e higher bitrates)

MP3 has the key advantage that it is far more portable (i.e. will play on more suudio s/w and hardware music players) than AAC

Generally I would say that if you are a committed iTunes/iPod user the AAC is the way to go (and I do note that this is the MAC section of the forum ...) - otherwise use MP3.

WC

[steve]

AAC is Apple's compressed format. It is generally reckoned to give better audio quality than MP3 for the same compression rates and filesizes (this diffenec declines when less compression is used - i.e higher bitrates)

The test results that I've read indicate that there is little significant difference in sound quality at bit rates of 128 kbps or higher.

Overall rating: The results for each sample were grouped together without modifications.

Then I performed an ANOVA analysis. The results are graphed below. They show that all encoders are tied on first place, except l3enc which of course comes out last being the low anchor.

http://listening-tests.hydrogenaudio.or ... esults.htm

[mandyslater100]

Well I would say that 128 bit AAC sounds better than 128 bit MP3, but there is still a noticeable difference if you go for a higher bitrate. That's why Apple offer higher bitrate downloads in the itunes store.