Audio Units (AU): Taking GarageBand To New Horizons

By itself, GarageBand is quite a powerful application. It is simple to create songs with loops, record your voice, edit and export. The process is streamlined and Apple has it down to a science. When it comes to audio manipulation though, there is lots of room for expansion. Garageband comes pre-loaded with a few tools for audio manipulation. These include echo, reverb etc. These tools are ok, but if you want more options and more power, Audio Units are a great expansion. In an earlier post, I mentioned Audio Units. Here you will find out what they mean, and what they can do for you.

Audio Units are Apple’s plug-in technology provided by Core Audio. This allows third-party developers to expand not only Garageband, but also Apple’s other audio applications such as Logic. With Audio Units, you can apply a range of different effects to your tracks. Installing Audio Units isn’t much of a process. You copy the Unit to /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components folder, and if there are any presets with the Unit, they go in /Library/Audio/Presets. The next time you launch Garageband, you will be able to see the Unit you just installed.

To use your Units, you need to bring up the Track Info pane. Once there, make sure that the Details triangle in the bottom-left corner of the pane is selected. From here, clicking on the drop-down menu should display all of the Audio Units that you have installed. 16 Audio Units come pre-installed from Apple. Audio Units range from basic to complex.

Some perform only one task, while others may perform many. Each Unit is customizable using the tools included with it. To bring up the edit window, click on the button that resembles a pencil in the Details pane. The button is parallel with the drop-down menu that you selected your Audio Unit with in the first place.

When moving the sliders of an Audio Unit, the GarageBand track updates in real time. Each time you make a change, it is reflected in the track you are editing. Having a few Audio Units installed provides almost limitless possibilities to how you can edit and mess with your audio. To get you started, here is a list of a few free Audio Units. To really get a feel of what an Audio Unit is, I suggest downloading one and playing around with it. There are a huge amount of Audio Units out there ranging from free to $400 or more. Who said you had to be an audio engineer to mess with your sounds?