Levelator “Hack” #1 – Levelate Your Garageband Podcast in 4 Simple Steps

by Paul Colligan on October 17, 2006

First, a shout out to Chris Adamson over at O’Reilly for the original inspiration for this. His article and comments led me down the right path.

Problem:

Gigavox’s Levelator don’t play nice with Garageband as GB outputs compressed files and the GVL needs the uncompressed files to work. How cool would it be to have your final output from Garageband levelated (is that a term)?

Solution:

1) Delete the “Podcast” track from Garageband. You won’t get the chapter marks and all the fancy enhanced Podcast stuff (but you can re-import your levelated uncompressed file into GB if you need that stuff).

2) Under the “Share” menu, select “Send Song to iTunes.” This will send a mixed, uncompressed AIFF file to iTunes.

3) Levelate that file.

4) Import the Levelated file into iTunes and convert to MP3.

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  • OK Paul, here's a really dumb question.

    How do you import an audio file (say, a .WAV recording) into GarageBand? I've looked all over for how to do this, and I can't find it.

    Am I blind, or is this obvious feature missing from GarageBand?
  • Josh,

    just drag and drop the wav file from the finder.
  • Couldn't have said it better myself.

    P
  • Stupid me. Could they have at least put in an "import" menu option for dorks like me? :-)

    Thanks, guys.

    How do you feel about GarageBand as a podcast editor/production platform overall?
  • Josh,

    First of all "import" is such a Windows kinda thing ;-)

    I'm liking Garageband more and more because of the packaging of everything in the Garageband file. If I need to go back and do something different, I can.

    The missing link was the uncompressed finished file. It was a bummer not to have that - for Levelator and other things.

    I now got it all - and Garageband is looking a lot better as a result.

    Paul
  • Now, if GarageBand 3 would only import mp3 files. It's supposed to, but I've never been able to get it to so. I'm told that on the those rare occasions when GB does accept an mp3 drag-and-drop, the program converts to AAC or AIFF, anyway, so I've been converting in iTunes.

    Leigh
  • Importing mp3: Just drag and drop; that works for me. If it is not working my guess is that something is wonky in the mp3 file, not GB.
  • Thanks for thinking of that. For some reason, I just gave on using levalator for my show from garage band. You da Media!
  • Hey Paul, you don't have to delete the podcast track, just hide it.
  • Question- My interviews from my iriver or the phone hosting company I use give me a mp3 when I download them. then I insert them into garageband. When I did this little levalator hack trick I did not work. I think it maybe when I send it to itunes it seems to spit out an ACC not a AIFF file which wont work with the levalator. I think it may be those pesky mp3 files.

    Or am I just another failed stat from a california public school system?

    Cheers
    mike
  • nate
    I can't seem to import an mp3. Drag and drop results in a code: -120. I tried converting mp3s to AIFF, but it results in the same error. How can this be resolved?
  • Samantha
    I can successfully drag and drop a wav/aiff file into GB no problem, but it won't play properly when I try to listen to it. I recorded some talking from a movie on my ipod and it went into itunes, I then dropped it in as a new track. Maybe a stupid question, but Is the fact that it is speech and not music at all relevant ?? I dropped a piece of music I wrote into GB which was originally created in Sibelius and then moved to itunes which plays perfectly so I can't see why it won't behave. Please help me, I'm rubbish with these things : [
  • gustave16
    Just a problem i have recently discovered. When i compress my song from garageband and play it on itunes, some parts of the song just kind of fuzz out, then it goes back to normal again. The file is AIFF and i've tryd others. Is there something in the song that is doing this because i really have no hard distortion effects in it so i dont know what it is?
    Please help me..
  • Drag and drop an MP3 from Finder into Garageband: Works with mp3's from some handheld recorders, not from some others. (GB'08 4.1.2)

    WHen it fails, GB gives no error message, it just doesn't appear on the track.

    Put the mp3 in itunes, then import using Media Browser, it still doesn't work.

    In iTunes, Advanced > Convert to MP3. Drag the new mp3 into GB and it works, whether you use Media Browser or Finder.
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