Speeding up a Mix....Need Help!

[Jrasia]

Hopefully someone here has some experience with this problem....let me explain.

A band came in to initially record some demos, liked the sound so much, that they are now considering using the songs for a EP release.

Session was recorded in Nuendo 3, live off the floor, very ambient, heavy stuff. Probably one of the best sessions I had.

Anways, after doing the beds, overdubs, and giving everything a listen at the end of the night, the band later decided that about 4 out of the 5 songs seem 'slow' to them. Not by much, but could use a slight bump to speed them up.

I've never been one to mess around with pitch shift, or play around with plugins, but I'd like to keep these guys happy.

I'm skeptical about doing any speed increase, cause I assume its just going to mess with the whole mix and ruin things. No vocals have been recorded yet, and we'd like to see if its even possible before recording them.

My question is, is there anyway to speed up the temp of these songs without noticable messing up the sound?

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Jay

[bennychico11]

well, it's always going to mess with the sound. The better the plugin, the less artifacts you'll here.
I'd bounce/export a test version of the mix as is. Then time compress it where you want it and listen back. But it all depends on how much you speed it up and how well your ear is tuned to hear if any artifacts are created. If you don't hear anything...then go for it!

[MessianicDreams]

i would be tempted to simply re-sample it rather than try to use a time-expansion plug, as this will, depending on the quality of your plug-in, cause some fairly strong artifacts.

so you'll get your faster tempo, but with a slightly higher pitch.

as longas it's only a little bit faster, the tempo change won't cause the "chipmonk" effect on the vocals..

[legionserial]

If your using nuendo 3, you should be able to put all the tracks and audio files in 'musical mode', which will tie it to the tempo on the sequencer. So when you change the tempo, everything will stick to that tempo, all the audio files will speed up. The advantage of doing it this way also is that there is no pitchshifting that occurs whatsoever. the disadvantage is that if you speed it up too much it will probly add some artifacts.

[Jrasia]

Thanks for all the great suggestions. Greatly appreciated.

As it turns out, the songs have mysteriously been playing back at the wrong sample rate.

As I said before, the project was recording in Nuendo, Audiofire 12, 44.1, 24bit.
We played back the mixes at the end of the night, everyone was happy.
Next day, I go to send the band a quick mix down mp3 of there songs, and thats when they started noticing how all the songs were slower.
Even did a mix down to .wav, double checked export settings for sample rate, bit rate...etc.

After trying to figure out why everything is now supposily slower, I noticed that if I changed the sample rate in the projects to 48.0, without resampling the actual audiofiles, everything is now at the proper tempo and pitch. The audio files themselves in Nuendo are 44.1, which is how they were recorded.

How could have this happened? A template was saved in Nuendo for 44.1, 24bit, everything was totally fine during both recording, overdubs, and playback, computer was untoched at end of night, and then all of a sudden all the songs only properly play back at 48.0

Anybody have this problem before?

Theres no way the entire project could have been resampled without me knowing. I've been scratching my head over this, I have no idea how this could have happened.
Jay

[bennychico11]

do you have any piece of digital gear that allows you to send clocking information to Nuendo? It could be you had a sample rate set to 48kHz somewhere, despite your session being at 44.1kHz. Then maybe when you turned the clock off, it screwed everything up.

Or it could be something simple as you THOUGHT you made a 44.1kHz session but you didn't.

[Jrasia]

My clock is set internally, and I have nothing else that could have conflicted with it.

I also reopened the template that I saved in Nuendo and created a new project and sure enough it was set for 44.1, not 48.0.

weird, very weird.

[SouthSIDE Glen]

Old proverb:

"When you're sure everything is right but it still doesn't work, something you're sure is right is actually wrong."

G.

[gcapel]

I would tell them ....too frek'n bad. They shoud have got the tempo right at the the first drum track. I beleive it to be crutial for the band to listen to the initial drum tracks to make sure it's at the write speed. I just hate fixing things I guess.

Hey if it sounds good to ya them convince them to keep it.

[Ironklad Audio]

gcapel called it...the band should know what tempo their own songs are supposed to be...and furthermore at least SOMEBODY should be able to notice, while playing, that the tempo is off so that they can do another take, instead of trying to rely on studio tricks to fix it

[chessrock]

Originally Posted by Jrasia

How could have this happened?

Because you tracked at 48.0

Your Audiofire settings were probably different than your project settings.

.

[DAS19]

Originally Posted by chessrock

Because you tracked at 48.0

Your Audiofire settings were probably different than your project settings.

.

My guess as well.

[DAS19]

Its not a big deal though just export to 48 then convert to 41.