VARIABLE SAMPLING FREQUENCIES IN A MUSIC TRACK

I have always used a sampling rate of 44,100 when recording in audacity and for output to .wav or .mp3.

Today I opened up an aup3 file and discovered that while some of the tracks are 44,100, some are 80,000+ and some are 96,000+. While the playback is fine, I presume this may cause issues with output of wav or mp3 files. Converting the higher sampling rates to 44,100 resulted in a playback that was about 10% of the correct tempo.

I did not set the tracks to higher than 44,100 so not sure how this happened. What I do know is that every time Audacity is updated, they seem to introduce more bugs and problems than they fixed. Time shift is a critical function but was removed, so I dropped back to the last version that included it and will not update again.

Other than the forum where they ask about features, which are rarely if ever actually implemented, it appears that programmers are deciding what the users need, without asking. This is a typical IT problem where the nerdy techs have no clue what people are actually doing with software and decide to make changes that seem cool.

You must be “converting” it in the wrong way.

To change the sample rate of an Audacity track without changing the pitch or the length, you need to “Resample” the track.

Example (assuming that you’ve not changed the default sample rate from 44100):

  1. Launch Audacity
  2. Generate a 440 Hz Tone (“Generate” menu), 10 seconds duration.
  3. Play it and observe that the pitch is “A 440”, 10 seconds duration, and the track sample rate is 44100.
  4. With the track selected, “Tracks menu > Resample: → 48000”
  5. Play it and observe that the pitch is still “A 440”, 10 seconds duration, and the track sample rate is 48000.

That’s the correct way to resample a track, though usually you do not need to do that manually because Audacity will automatically resample to the “Project Rate” on Export.
(The “Project Rate” is in the bottom left corner of the main Audacity window.)


See this announcement: Time Shift Tool (F5) removed


See:

https://www.audacityteam.org/2-minute-survey-about-new-features/


This is a community forum, run by people that use Audacity for the benefit of people that use Audacity. I don’t think that we carry much influence these days as the new management prefer to use surveys. In the past, we would log feature requests, and write up proposals for the most popular.

Here are some that have been implemented to some extent (indicated by the green ticks):

and some proposals that have been implemented: