Audacity 2.3.2 (yesterday I uninstalled and reinstalled Audacity 2.3.2)
Operating system: Windows 10 home version 1803
Audacity recently started recording and playing back at a lower pitch or speed. This occurred several months ago and after a few “cold shutdowns” and restarts audacity worked properly. This same issue started again and after a few “cold shutdowns” and restarts of the computer, the issue remains.
Check the “sample rate” settings for your sound card / audio interface, and ensure they are set at 44100 Hz for both playback and recording.
There is a [u]Playback Speed Toolbar[/u] but the regular “Play” button will still play at normal-speed.
This won’t be directly-helpful but…
This isn’t supposed to happen. The drivers are supposed to communicate the sample rate between the hardware & software or convert the sample rate so “everything works together”. You shouldn’t have to “manually” match the sample rates.
If you record at 48kHz, but the file get’s “tagged” as 44.1kHz it will play back about 8% too slow and a 60 second file will take a little more than 65 seconds. These are the most common sample rates. Audio CDs are 44.1kHz and commercial DVDs (and most video files) are 48kHz. Some soundcards operate internally at a constant 48kHz and the drivers make any necessary conversions.
You can get a sample rate mismatch with an S/PDIF connection because only audio is transmitted over S/PDIF and otherwise the software & hardware don’t “communicate”.
You can also get small speed/pitch problems if you record with one device (like a USB microphone) and playback on a different device (such as a regular soundcard). If the internal clocks don’t match (and they’ll never match perfectly) you can get this problem. Usually it’s only slightly noticeable by musicians who have trouble playing in-tune and normal listener won’t hear a problem.