Question on Garageband (Burning to CD)

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lga5824

lga5824

It's Just My Opinion
Hi - I am just playing around with burning projects from Garageband to CD. I was able to burn 1 song on a CD-RW. However, when I put the disc back in for burning the 2nd song, it won't let me. When I complete my demo, I'm going to need more than 1 song on a disc. Can someone please help? Wasn't able to find answers on the help desk of Mac/Garageband.

Thanks!
 
One more question: I tried to put the disc into a stereo CD player and it gave me a message as Disc not finalized. Can someone help with that too?
 
I am going to treat this like it's a serious question. How are you burning your CD? Are you doing it in itunes or some other way? If you're just burning your song onto a CD on your desktop, you'll end up with a data disc that happens to have music on it.
 
You can't burn a disc directly from garage band. You must first convert the file to an mp3 file in itunes and then burn it to a disc from there. Also don't use CD-RW, it's a waste of money. Use CD-R. Wait until all your songs are ready and burn them all to disc at the same time. You can't burn them one song at a time to the same disc.
 
I know it sounds dumb, but I'm totally serious. On my Macbook, I am in garageband. I clicked "burn to CD" for my song that I recorded on the garageband software. I put the disc in and press "burn". It mixes and normalizes, then ejects the disc stating it was successful. When I put that disc in another player, the stereo gives a message that it's not finalized. Not sure how to get the disc to play. The other question is how do I burn more than one garageband song on a disc since it does one at a time and won't let me put the same disc back in.
 
Guitar Zero - Thanks for the response. I was typing my other response and found you had written in. Garageband instructions were to burn right away, so I wasn't aware I have to do the iTunes thing. Thanks! So, I heard that mp3 is the less desired format for saving and I should save under wav or something. Any thoughts on this?
 
1) Never, NEVER MP3. Not for audio discs. Never, ever, ever, ever, EVER, ever. ALWAYS PCM data (.aiff, .wav, etc.). If you're going to wind up going straight to CD, 16-bit, 44.1kHz. If not, then 24-bit at the project's native rate (assuming you're going to go through some sort of mastering phase, even if it's 'self-mastering').

2) Render your mixes one at a time to the hard drive. Render a collection of mixes to CD later using an authoring program that will write using red-book specifications.

3) Don't use iTunes if you want a replicatable disc - iTunes does NOT burn to specs. Seen it too many times... Same with WMP. I know there are some consumer programs that WILL write to spec in the background - I have no idea what those programs are though. Maybe Nero - But don't quote me on that.
 
Massive Master - You just wrote a bunch of stuff I didn't quite understand. I'm a newbie at recording altogether, so I'm following garageband's instructions on how to do things. There aren't many options with this software, but it's simple enough where I think I can record some demo quality songs.

On the program, it will only allow me to compress and sent to iTunes with either AAC or mp3. I don't know what AAC is. Is that a better route to take than the mp3?


Bare with me here, I'm just learning. I've always been on the microphone side of things! :)
 
Uncheck the "Compress" option and it should export as a 16-bit/44.1KHz .aif file.

If burning a CD in Garageband, uncheck "Leave Disk Appendable" to make sure it's finalized.

Also, don't use CD-RW discs.
 
massive master is correct that saving as wav files will give you better audio quality, but for demos like you're talking about, mp3 will do, and takes a hell of a lot less disc space. Usually 4-5 mB for mp3 files, ten times that much for wav files. But yes if you are after the best quality demo, use wav. Just depends on your personal needs.

Also, in order to burn more than one song to CD, it must be done all at once, you can't add them one at a time.

Massive, I wasn't aware that I-Tunes did not burn CDs to spec. Thanks for that info.
 
Okay, so about AAC? Is that better than mp3? How about the previous info to not compress the song. Does that still have to go to iTunes with Garageband? I'll play around a bit more, but I'm just trying to save some time by learning from all of you fine folks.

So it appears I can't burn the song directly to disc from garageband. Or if I do, the disc won't play. Sounds like I have to send to iTunes and burn from there. I don't have an option for wav that I can see.

What should I do? Thanks!
 
What I said about not being able to burn a song to CD directly from garage band used to be true, but apparently the new i-life upgrade changed all that. Now you can burn directly. 6 months ago I hadn't upgraded and could not. I tried it today and it's been added to the share menu. Nice to know.

Saving AAC format will give you an MPEG4 file, which is better quality than mp3. If you save them all to your hard drive that way, then put in a blank disk and burn the CD from your computer's CD program that would seem the best way to do it.

Not sure if there is any way to get to "Red Book" specs as Massive talked about. I'm thinking there may not be. More research needed.
 
I just saw it yesterday - And I can't find it.

Somewhere, if you look around those "Mac Tips" sites, you'll find out how to access the .aiff file that's used to create the MP3 or AAC file.

Sounds absolutely ridiculous? Absolutely. But evidently, it's possible.
 
guitar zero said:
massive master is correct that saving as wav files will give you better audio quality, but for demos like you're talking about, mp3 will do, and takes a hell of a lot less disc space. Usually 4-5 mB for mp3 files, ten times that much for wav files. But yes if you are after the best quality demo, use wav. Just depends on your personal needs...
Click to expand...
You do not want to burn a demo disk with mp3's. Besides lacking the quality not all cd players will play mp3's. It's a newer technology that the older cd players just can't do. Besides, you can burn 10-15 decent size songs to a cd which is more than enough for a demo disk.
 
Found this:

Every time GarageBand exports a song, it first creates an uncompressed mixdown file, called Output.aif. It then compresses this file into the file that you actually see. If you ever want to access the raw, uncompressed file, you can do this:

1. Initiate the export. GarageBand says it's creating the mixdown.
2. Open up Activity Monitor (Applications » Utilities » Activity Monitor) and select the GarageBand process.
3. Press the Inspect button at the top.
4. Select the Open Files and Ports tab. Copy the contents of it into a text editor.
5. Search the text for Output; it's usually on the last line.
6. Copy the path to the clipboard -- it will be something long and ugly like /private/var/ folders/8c/8c6KjuqYGKCLxYlDtiJFJk+++TI/ -Tmp-/GarageBand/Export/Output.aif (robg says: Note that spaces were added to the path shown here to allow line breaks; the real path won't have spaces, of course.).
7. Open up Terminal (Applications » Utilities » Terminal). Enter mv, press the Space Bar, then press Command-V to paste the copied path, then press Space Bar one more time. Do not press Return yet.
8. Drag the folder in which you wish to save the raw mixdown file into the Terminal window, then press Return.
9. Wait for GarageBand to finish creating the mixdown.

That's it! As you moved the Output.aif file, GarageBand doesn't know where it is, so when it tries to compress the file, it'll fail. Therefore, the compressed M4A file won't be created.

I'm going to try this when I get home tonight.
 
fuzzrhythm said:
Uncheck the "Compress" option and it should export as a 16-bit/44.1KHz .aif file.

If burning a CD in Garageband, uncheck "Leave Disk Appendable" to make sure it's finalized.

Also, don't use CD-RW discs.
Click to expand...

The answer has been right here the whole time. Fuzz is right, it's just as simple as unchecking the compress box. Downloads it as an aif file, sure as $hit. Sorry we didn't listen to you sooner. All that other 9 step crap above is totally... well... crap.
 
That's awesome. Thanks for everyone's input. Good to know that even the pros don't know every little detail! I'm proud to announce that I'm up and running - keyboard, vocals, firebox, recording.....it's a wonderful thing.
 
lga5824 said:
That's awesome. Thanks for everyone's input. Good to know that even the pros don't know every little detail! I'm proud to announce that I'm up and running - keyboard, vocals, firebox, recording.....it's a wonderful thing.
Click to expand...
Hey mister, who you calling a pro?
 
hey mister, who you callin' mister? that's ms. or mrs. :)
 
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