Audacity Forum

I'm a new user working on a special recording project. Problem: When listening to the first playback, the pitch is obviously higher than normal. I can fix this with the 'adjust pitch' effect. That's great. How do I get steady pitch at all times. If I want to record another track along with the original it becomes very messy. Stuck in Oyster Bay!

I don't think this has been confirmed yet, but it appears to be that some hardware responds badly to certain sample rates, so that, for example, Audacity is set for audio at 44.1 kHz, and the audio hardware says that it is delivering at 44.1 kHz, but really it is sending the audio data at 48 kHz.

44100 Hz and 48000 Hz are the most common sample rates, so have a look in "Edit > Preferences > Audio I/O" and see what the default sample rate is. If it is set to 44100, try changing it to 48000 and see if that fixes it (or the other way round).

I think the default setting is for 44100 / 16 bit, but try various combinations (48000 / 32 bit etc.) and see if there is a combination that works properly. Some sound card drivers can be very picky and will only work properly if you have the right combination.

Thanks Steve! I will give that a try. I will post the result for others.

OK. I have experimented with sample rates and bits. I tried 44100, 4800 up and down with all combinations of bits from 16, 24 and 32 bit samples. They would record and playback OK on or two times and then revert to a higher pitch. This happened in all combinations. I'm plugged directly to an Alisis io/2 with a Taylor 910ce (onboard pre-amp) This worked fine with Reaper. I ultimately found that Reaper was too complicated for a beginner and ultimatly went with Audacity. I never had a pitch problem with Reaper so I doubt it's my sound card. I have plenty of memory and hard drive. Looking for solutions or direction.

Still frustrated in Oyster Bay.

Larry

The main difference that I can see between the way that Reaper and Audacity record, is that Reaper uses ASIO which Audacity does not. Audacity can not ship with ASIO support built in due to licensing restrictions. (Reaper is not open source and so subject to different rules).

The Alisis io/2 is primarily designed to use ASIO drivers, but includes support for Windows drivers (which Audacity uses). This should work fine in theory, but it looks like it doesn't work well in practice (which is a shame because it looks like a nice bit of hardware).

I think that you are going to have to use a program that supports ASIO for the recording stage of your projects. I think Alesis include Cubasis with this product, alternatively you could try Reaper or Krystal Audio Engine (http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/) for doing the recording. Once you have recorded the raw data, you can export the tracks as WAV files and import them into Audacity for editing and mixing.

Oh, hang on a minute....

You are recording with the Alisis io/2, but what are you playing back on?
I'm betting that you are using some cheap on-board audio device?

If so, than that is probably the cause of the problem, not the Alesis at all.

If you are recording with one device, and playing back with another, there is the potential for pitch / speed problems.

Audacity requests of your recording device "send me audio samples every 1/44100 second", and the the recording device goes "OK, here you are". Inside the recording device is a little bloke with a stopwatch, who times every 1/44100 second and sends an audio sample at each interval. Audacity then wants to play the audio and says to the playback device "I'm going to send you a load of audio samples, and I want you to pass them on to the loudspeakers, one every 1/44100 second". The playback device says "OK, let's have them", and a little bloke with a stopwatch in the playback device converts one sample every 1/44100 second and sends the signal to the loudspeakers. Now this is fine, as long as both of the little blokes have stopwatches that tick at the same speed, but what happens if one of them has a stopwatch that runs a little faster or slower than the other? We get the problem that you are experiencing. And why does this not happen with ASIO? I'm not sure about that as I don't know enough about ASIO, other than it works very differently.

If this is the problem, then it will probably be easy to fix by installing a better sound card (quite easy and fairly inexpensive if you are on a full size PC rather than a laptop).

Thanks so much for your informative reply. Someone in my IT department also indicated I might need a more sophisticated sound card. I will do some surfing today. Hopefully my non-techno brain can get a handle on the specs. I have down loaded Kristal to my PC, hoping it will record and play back with reliabale pitch reproduction.

I spent all day yesterday editing and mixing 17 tracks of music and chant performed by a dear friend. She is a native Hawaiian, brought up on Molokai who has a remarkable musical gift. She is also very ill with terminal cancer so, I have felt a great need to finish the project before she can't appreciate our efforts. I have been working on this project for eight months and finally mixed it all down yesterday. It's my first project and Audacity made it pretty easy. I hate to give up on it now that I'm getting comfortable working with the software.

Thanks again Steve!! I really appreciate your thoughts and input!

Larry

OK! I finally solved the pitch problem. I simply had to set the default record and playback bit/megz to match the Alesis ie/2 I use to record with. It seems simple but you have to make it stick by setting the defaults in one or more areas of Audacity. The "new project" record box next to the track has to indicated 24bit/48 mghz every time you start a new project. It now reproduces the proper pitch. I also found the "listen to track while recording" box so I can add tracks to pre-recorded projects easily. I think I''m on my way to some productive work.

Again, Many thanks for your input!

larry

Hello,

I too had this same problem with pitch when recording vocals. I love audacity so I am very grateful we were able to fix this issue. It was indeed choosing the correct rates in Audacity to match the rates from Alesis. Mine ended up being 24-bit 48000hz. Thanks Steve for helping us out it is very much appreciated.