[Troll]

I've been asked to work on some accompanying bits for a local band with two female singers. They gave me a copy of a CD they recorded which is just vocals and acoustic guitar. My idea was to import the tracks into GarageBand and then mess around with accompaniments.

First problem: iTunes imported the CD as AAC. GarageBand can't import AAC. Bit short-sighted of Apple since they're punting AAC but I converted the AAC to AIFF with Quicktime. Problem solved and the song plays fine in Quicktime as an AIFF.

Second problem: I import the AIFF into GarageBand and the track slows down, so my soprano voice female vocalist becomes a baritone male.

I tried this with a few different tracks, tried adjusting the tempo, key and got the same result each time. Can't find anything on the web about this either. Please help me turn the guys back to gals!

[JLL]

Originally posted by Troll:
First problem: iTunes imported the CD as AAC.

Because that's the format you chose in iTunes' import settings.

But you don't have to import the song in iTunes - just drag it off the CD.

[Troll]

Originally posted by JLL:
Because that's the format you chose in iTunes' import settings.

But you don't have to import the song in iTunes - just drag it off the CD.

I realise that. I just find it short-sighted of Apple to encourage us to use AAC and then not support it in GarageBand. I imported this song already so I could listen to it on my iPod. Having followed their advice and using AAC for my iTunes library, I now find that my iTunes library is incompatible with GB. I would have thought that GB relied on Quicktime and would be able to convert the AAC to AIFF the same way it does MP3.

Not a major problem really. I'm more concerned about the track slowing down.

[fizzlemynizzle]

AAC shouldn't be supported because it's a lossy format and will sound bad if used in professional recordings, just like MP3 does. AIFF is the format to use for recording even at the novice level. Nothing shortsighted about that.

[Spheric Harlot]

oddly enough, mp3 IS supported.

AFAIK, import into GarageBand does NOT rely upon QuickTime, which is why not every format supported by QT is supported by GB.

Blame Emagic for that one - they only recently added mp3 support into Logic (which makes sense, since as mentioned, mp3 is a pretty pointless format for serious audio production - which is what basically all Emagic software was geared towards until Apple commissioned GarageBand).

-s*

[Troll]

I tried importing direct from the CD and it seems to work. Thanks guys!

[dlefebvre]

I also believe that although AIFF takes more disc space it requires less CPU power since the system doesn't have to decode it while playing. I don't think you could play as many AAC or MP3 tracks simultaneously.