Das Werkstatt

First of all: I hate to use GarageBand for recording audio. It might be nice for arranging MIDI, but it definitely sucks as a DAW.

[PROBLEM]
However, the worst thing about it is that it doesn't offer an option to export in any lossless format - only lossy AAC, M4A, etc...

I just wanted to have the audio of the recorded tracks, so I could mix/master it in some real audio app like e.g. Ardour.


[SOLUTION]
The ".band" file is a folder (I must check on the Mac why my friend thought it's a file) - with a subfolder in it called "Media". In there you'll find ".aif" (Audio Interchange File Format) files - Apple's equivalent to WAVs.

These are your recordings.

Hm... I've just seen that "M4A" is an MPEG4 container (as I've thought), but it seems that Apple is using it to store audio in a proprietary "apple lossless" format.

So, maybe one can use M4A to export lossless files - but anyway, my method described above is more practical when moving to a different application for mixing.