Newbie for both Mac and Ableton live got 2 simple questions

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kribee
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Joined: Sun Nov 09, 2008 2:10 pm

Newbie for both Mac and Ableton live got 2 simple questions

Post by kribee » Mon Dec 15, 2008 1:19 pm

Hi all!
I am mixing wave files on Live on my Macbook pro, and am really enjoying it.
However, I have these 2 problems :
-under "music" folder I have some folders full of wave songs. I have prepared them
in Live so they match rhythmically when I play them, which has created .asd files.
I would like to convert all my files in MP3 in order to save room on my disk. How can I then "attach" the .asd files I have created to the newly converted mp3 files?
-also : when I play these music files in iTunes, it seems that a new .wave file is created in Itunes folder, which seems strange to me, I mean, now I have everything doubled... scratch my head..... Shall keep all my files in "iTunes" and add the .asd files???? thank you in advance for your help

ollyb303
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Post by ollyb303 » Mon Dec 15, 2008 2:23 pm

Live automatically converts mp3 to wav anyway (Live does not deal with mp3 internally) so you're best off keeping your wavs as wavs - converting them to mp3 is going to cause some loss of quality due to the compression which you will not regain when Live converts back to wav to play the files.

My advice - get a bigger/nother hard drive!
.:O:B:1:.
ob1techno.com

laird
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Post by laird » Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:43 pm

.asd files contain both the audio data as well as all the warp markers and stuff.

Think of them like photoshop files... photoshop files may look just like pictures inside photoshop, but actually contain all sorts of info like layers and things that your slide-show application can't handle.

You can have both the large .asd files and "flattened" small .mp3 files.

If you are really tight up for space, you could erase all the .asd files and just remake them from mp3s every time you use one... but as ollb303 mentions, that comes with a loss in quality and Live will convert the mp3s to .wav before using them anyway.

As for itunes, though, there is probablt no reason to keep Song1.asd in your Live folder AND song1.wav in your itunes folder. I'd just convert song1.wav to song1.mp3 and delete the wav file.

kribee
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Joined: Sun Nov 09, 2008 2:10 pm

Post by kribee » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:53 pm

thanks for your wise advices!

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