Is it possible to change pitch without affecting tempo?

[skey]

I'm trying to shift the pitch of an audio clip slightly higher, but it shortens the clip every time. Is there any way to change pitch without affecting the length of a clip?

[kozikowski]

Maybe not in Audacity. It's a common complaint. Not many people spend a lot of time in the [X] Change menus, where "X" is Pitch, Speed, etc.

Koz

[SAJ]

Wait, I don't understand. I've used Effect->Change Pitch many times, and never noticed that the time or tempo was affected.

[steve]

Change pitch and Change tempo work by chopping the sound into little blocks, then sticking them back together again, but adjusted to create the desired effect. The accuracy of the final length is limited by the size of the blocks that are used. When processing longish sections, the result is usually sufficiently accurate to not cause a problem, but when working on very short sounds this inaccuracy can become very noticeable. These particular effects are not really suitable where sample accuracy is required, though with a bit of fiddling (combing tempo, pitch and speed change, and doing a bit of manual sample editing) it is possible to achieve accurate lengths.

If you are doing a lot of accurate loop editing, then you may find that a dedicated loop editing program is better for the job.