Exported Audio File Sounds Different Than In Garage Band

I understand that distortion naturally happens when the volume goes in the red

there is nothing wrong with "in the red", it's when the final Clip led light (on any track) that the signal is clipped, and that level need to come down, or possibly protected by use of the peakLimiter effect

jfbat wrote:
Thanks.

The only thing is, now my export is full of distortion from the clipping. I understand that distortion naturally happens when the volume goes in the red, and in fact, sometimes I play with it. However, there's unintentional fuzz in the exported file that was not there in the Garage Band file. I have no idea why that would be happening.

The Auto-Normalize feature is like an auto pilot. It brings the audio file's peak value up to the loudest level just shy of distortion, but no higher. This prevents clipping, but it may also keep the audio sounding soft if the average volume of the song is sufficiently beneath its highest peak value.

Think of the peak value as the peak of a mountain top. If most of the mountain is far below its peak, the volume will be soft when auto-normalize is on since the peak will be limited at the loudest "legal" value, and most of the mountain is far below that.

Turning off auto normalize allows you to ignore the loudest "legal" value and raise the volume of the entire song (/altitude of the entire mountain) as much as you want. You can bring up the average levels, even if it means bursting through the dividing line between clean signal and distortion.

If auto-normalize is keeping the volume of your song artificially low because of a few insignificant peaks, turning it off and raising the overall volume will have a decent tradeoff. The few times the peaks cause distortion may be so brief as to be unnoticeable. However, if there is lots of volume close to the top of your levels, and you turn off auto normalize, you now have the manual ability to cause a lot of distortion as well.

Therefore, while turning off the auto pilot of auto normalize lets you increase overall loudness, it also lets you overcome the safety net and cause nasty distortion if you aren't careful.

Another thing about exporting to iTunes: Which programs Preference settings take precedence? (how's that for alliteration)? Like, if the iTunes import is set to MP3, will that override whatever GB Pref is set to? Do both have to be set the same? Could the loss jf is experiencing be because the project was not exported as an aif?

• Turn off Auto-Normalize in GB.
• In iTunes, turn off the Equalizer and the "Sound Enhancer" in the prefs.

For me the jury is still out for GB's Auto Normalize feature.

It would be nice if we could do a poll on how many people use or don't use the feature.

you're not importing anything, so iTunes' prefs do not apply.

Ahh. So you're sending from GB to iTunes, not using iTunes to bring in from GB. So the GB preferences dictate how the file is sent.
Thank you.

that's pretty much it, yeah. In essence GB exports to disc and then adds an entry to iTunes' database.