Logic Pro Time and Pitch Machine Greyed Out: The Fix for M4A and MP3 Files

A client following my instructions found the Time and Pitch Machine greyed out in Logic Pro’s Audio Editor, and the reason was that the file he was working on was an M4A.

I’d worked with him before. In the earlier session on matching his recording to a Suno track, the Suno version had an unusual tempo with three decimal places, and I showed him how to work out that tempo and then use Logic’s Time and Pitch Machine in the Audio Editor to change tempo in very precise steps. When he came back to try it himself, the Time and Pitch Machine was greyed out in the Audio Editor’s Functions menu, so he couldn’t follow the steps at all.

The Time and Pitch Machine is a bit of an older feature in Logic Pro, and it doesn’t work with compressed files such as MP3s, or the M4A files my client was using.

Logic can only apply the Audio Editor’s Functions to WAV and AIFF files.

Saving the region as a WAV

So it was an easy one to solve. I explained what he needed to do, and he did it himself:

In the Audio Editor, go to the File menu and choose Save Region As.
Change the file format from the original format to WAVE.
Save it, then drag the new file from the browser on the right-hand side of Logic back into the timeline.
Double-click the new region to open it in the Audio Editor again.

Once he’d done that, the Functions menu was fully available, Time and Pitch Machine included.

MP3s behave the same way, so it’s worth saving a compressed region as a WAV before you go looking for the Functions menu.

Book a session (£90)

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Saving the region as a WAV

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