[FatBastard]

What is a good Mac audio program that converts and edits (minor cuts, splices and fades) audio formats for use in iMovie, Premiere or iDVD. I'm more concerned on a quality conversion tool.

When I was going through my "Export to iDVD sound skipping" problem, one of the solutions that was recommended to me was a PC program that converted audio from "d" to "d". I was told that the Mac conversions go from "d" to "a" and then back from "a" to "d" when writing to a DVD. That is where the skipping or audio degradation occurs. With this program it requires more drive space to move the files but the conversion time is around 10 seconds for a 3 minute clip and the conversion quality is 100%.

[buddhabelly]

This doesn't sound possible. My understanding is once it's in the computer it's digital and the only way to go to analog would be to physically run the audio out of the mac and back in through an analog soundcard. This BS about Mac converting to analog is not true. (but please correct me if I'm wrong, because that means my fundamental understanding of computer editing will be null)

As for editing, I like Peak alot. It's not free, unless you buy Final Cut, but it's good. Another program that I have been playing around with is an opensource ware named Audacity. It has VST support and there are some pretty good freeware VST Plugins floating around. It also can import many formats including decoding mp3, ogg vorbis, aif, etc. You just can't encode mp3 because it has to be licensed, thus paid for, but you could convert an aif in iTunes.

A good place to start finding them is at www.osxaudio.com they have reviews of osx compatible audio programs.

Hope this helps.

[climber]

Quicktime pro can trim almost any audio file. It can also do the same to video. (with audio)

Then you can use the two audio tracks in imovie to fade from one track to the other. Anything much fancier will demand the use of a program like Final Cut Pro. Otherwise you would wind up doing the audio editing in a seperate program from imovie. That is kinda a pain in the butt.

I am not sure what you are trying to convert, so any recomendation is hard to make. If all you need to do is take a 5 minute aif file and cut it down to 30 seconds, quicktime pro will do this well.