Quality of .mp3/.acc file I import into GarageBand to serve as the background beat seems to decrease?

Question

Quality of .mp3/.acc file I import into GarageBand to serve as the background beat seems to decrease?

Why is it that the .mp3 or .acc file I import into GarageBand as the background beat for a song seems to lose quality once I import it? I can tell a difference in how the .mp3 sounds in GarageBand and how it sounds when played in iTunes. The decrease in qulaity isn't major but it's there, does anyone else notice this? Am I missing a setting or something? I work with rap music, and whenever I try to import the .mp3 to serve as the beat it always degrades the qulaity a little bit. Can anyone help?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7), 512MB RAM, 160GB HD

Posted on Jan 31, 2012 5:37 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 1, 2012 1:36 AM in response to Kendall Wagner

The quality shouldn't degrade, since all that GB does is expand the compressed mp3 file into an uncompressed AIFF.

Maybe the difference you notice has to do with the settings in iTunes - if you have the "sound enhancement" checked in the preferences, iTunes puts an EQ/compressor on the audio that might make it sound a little "fuller". Turn off this preference and all EQs in iTunes and compare again!

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Answer 2

Jun 16, 2012 4:07 AM in response to Kendall Wagner

Kendall,

I noticed the same thing! I know EXACTLY what the problem is now!

For some reason, the default for Garage Band is to play back and export a file in MONO sound and not STEREO. Strangely, simply selecting "Stereo 1/2 (Built-in Microphone)" under the "real instrument" tab (on the right hand pannel) for certain track will change the output to stereo and you will see there is no loss of quality when you export this file.

Alternatively, when you import a real instrument track so that you can drag a song in from iTunes, you can bring up the "instrument setup" dropdown menu and select the same thing here.

Also, when I export songs, I make sure I have unselected the "Auto Normalize" checkbox in the advanced tab of the Garage band preferences, since it tends to make the tracks a little too loud sometimes and clips a little bit.

I first noticed it was playing mono audio when the left and right faders were behaving in the exact same way, since they are being fed the same thing. As a test, I imported two tracks of the same song (with their left and right channels) and panned one to the left (i.e. left had both left and right in it) and the other to the right (same again) to see if it sounded the same as the unpanned single track - and it did!

Hope this helps!

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Answer 3

Jun 16, 2012 4:56 AM in response to Jordatious

For some reason, the default for Garage Band is to play back and export a file in MONO sound and not STEREO.

That's definitely not true.

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Answer 4

Jun 16, 2012 6:33 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

It definitely is for a "real intrument" track, but it looks like that's not the case for one of these "basic tracks".

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Answer 5

isteveus

Level 5

4,334 points

Jun 16, 2012 6:53 AM in response to Jordatious

Jordatious wrote:

It definitely is for a "real intrument" track, but it looks like that's not the case for one of these "basic tracks".

Unless you have a stereo instrument then all real instruments would be mono.

The master track may have eq or effects that would also make it sound different then in itunes.

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