Hello, I have been facing a technical issue with Audacity. Tried some online tips and Youtube videos… but notvery helpful.
The issue is… when I record a song, the playback is slower than the original tempo. Also the key is reduced by 2 tones.
I tried fixing the Windows sample rate to 44100 to match with Audacity’s sample rate… but still doesn’t work. I even changed the sample rates to 48000 on both but still of no avail.
Does anyone know why this happens? Thanks!
What’s your hardware setup and are you recording and playing-back through the same soundcard/interface? "“Consumer soundcards” are sometimes off by enough to cause pitch/tempo problems. You won’t notice a difference if you record and play-back on the same device but sometimes you’ll get a difference if you record with a USB interface or USB mic, and then play-back through a regular soundcard.
Two notes? Two semitones? That’s about 12%. That’s more than the difference between 44.1K and 48K, plus it’s rare to get the sample rate fouled-up like that, so it’s probably not a sample-rate mix-up.
Thanks Doug for your reply. The pitch is lowered by 2 semi-tones.
I am using M-Audio as the interface, and a Windows 11 platform. The play back is M-Audio, which is connected to my Bose L1 speaker. My laptop is not very old - about 6 years old
now.
Sometimes the recording comes out squeaky clean just like the original… the music tracks are played from my keyboards into the M-Audio interface and into my computer.
Since you’re recording and playing back on the same device, my guess was wrong. 
One experiment you can do is to generate a 440Hz “A”, which will be digitally perfect. If it plays-back at the wrong pitch you have hardware or driver problem. (A driver problem is unlikely). if the digitally generated tone is always OK, you know you have a recording problem but that doesn’t help much to know that…
It’s hard to believe that there’s something wrong with your interface. But as I guess you know, the 44,100 or 48,000 clock (etc.) built-into the soundcard/interface does directly affect pitch and tempo and no clock is “perfect”.
It’s also probably not a problem with Audacity but you can try ocenaudio (which is also free) or your M-Audio interface may have come with software.
Dropouts (gaps in the audio caused by multitasking (1) ) can sometimes foul-up the speed and pitch but they usually come along with clicks & pops. And they usually happen during recording which makes playback faster.
You can also sometimes get 44.1K/48k problems with S/PDIF connections because it only sends audio with no other communication, but I assume you have a USB connection.
(1) Your operating system is always multitasking even if you’re only running one application.
May I throw in another idea?
I think Audacity is recording correctly - but your “Playback speed” might be set to something smaller than “1.000” in the “Play-at-speed” toolbar:
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