Garageband: Fix Recorded Track shows waveform but no sound during playback

Have you recorded an audio track in Garageband, only to find you can't hear anything when you play the recording back? Even though the track shows a recorded waveform, suggesting there should be audio present?

I'm no Garageband expert, but I checked all the settings I could find. The track wasn't muted, the track and master volume were both turned up, audio was set to playback via the Macbook speakers. Yet, there was no sound during playback and the audio level meters showed no output. Exporting the recording to an audio file didn't work either. What the actual heck?

The Solution

Hopefully I'm missing a feature in Garageband or an easier way to fix this, but this is the solution that worked: Create a new track and drag the waveform audio to that track.

1. Click the "+" sign to create a new track
2. Select the audio / microphone track option
3. Click Create
4. Drag the waveform audio recording to the newly created track
5. Now try playing back the file

Voila

We can now see levels in Garageband (see the volume meters) and can hear the recording during playback! Not sure how to explain it -- was the original track not the right kind of track? As in, one that doesn't support regular analog audio recordings? I didn't find evidence of this, but who knows.

Did this work for you?

Hope this helps -- please level a comment saying so (or not!) Thanks!