weird and wonderful - importing audio to Logic 9

[andygabrys]

This isn't a "how to do" something post, more of a "look what I found out" post.

I have used Logic for years (starting in eMagic days). I finally found out something today about importing audio files.

Say you are doing a 48Khz TV track with a ref track that you pulled from your iTunes library that happened to be saved as an ,m4a file - the apple lossless format. The ref track is 44.1kHz.

Logic plays the Apple Lossless format natively - because its apparently the format that Apple Loops are stored in.

So Logic automatically plays that ref track in your session without converting it - so in your 48K session it plays that 44.1 k file with no conversion, except on the fly it does speed up the track by a ratio of 48/44.1 and also changes the pitch upward by the same ratio. So kinda useless if you are pulling the tempo off the ref track!!!

I found although its nuts, that going into the audio bin in logic after importing the ref, and right clicking and selecting copy/convert and changing the file format to WAV or AIF and selecting the file sample rate to be whatever the session is at (i.e. 48 khz) will properly convert the file and then it plays at the correct tempo and pitch.

Neat huh? Luckily its only files in Apple Lossless format that requires this workflow. WAV's and AIF's and mp3s work as you would expect.

its these things that make you want to go crazy!!!

[pboss]

Thanks for the head's up - you probably just saved me some time, on a day when I will need it. I'm still sorting out the quirks of my new system. A lot of things have gotten better, but a few have gotten worse, and you end up first thinking you're crazy and finally you figure it out and by then, you actually are crazy. Like the way Mac Lion no longer searches the trash.

[andygabrys]

Wow really? That isn't just a setting you can select / deselect.

[pboss]

Wow really? That isn't just a setting you can select / deselect.

Yes, can you believe? And, no, you cannot change a preference setting to make it search trash and other areas of your computer. I have a new Mac / Lion machine since last spring. At first not finding folders in the Library directory was driving me crazy as I was setting up the music files (Logic, etc). Especially since I could see folders sitting there, if I navigated to them by hand, using certain paths. Fairly early on, I found a terminal command to show folders like the Library folder that Apple has suddenly chosen to hide, (this is a more well-known topic, let me know if you want a command).

Note: Mac's search is also using an index - and not actually searching your files. How non-useful is that? (faster and inaccurate isn't going to cut it). There is an Mac system app that runs naively and if you kill it via Activity Monitor, it will re-index your files, which I did do. But doing that didn't help much when Spotlight still won't show you all search results.

Finally after some research and some testing I realized that the Mac search (or Spotlight) function does search everything, including your Trash, but chooses not to show you results from Trash and also a whole host of other locations that it considers to be "system". These locations include places that you and I would normally go to look at for plugin settings, saved instruments patches, and all kinds of everyday things.

I solved it with this app http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/30073/find-file It's a free lightweight fast and powerful little utility that functions the way Search used to. Also, Mac / Lion search results window doesn't let you click on the "name" column anymore and then type the first letter to locate the entry you are looking for (or any other column) - it treats your text input as part of the search string - aggravating. But this find file utility does let you do that (like Mac Search used to).

I have used it for a few months now, and it has saved my workflow. This all applies at least to Mac Pro / Lion 10.7.5, 4.3 Ghz / 32G memory, + several internal SDD.

This is kind of off-topic, and TMI but FWIW.