CanI I change tempo for audio wave file and still keep same sound?

  • Thread starter Thread starter silly_rabbit
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silly_rabbit

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Greetings,
I recorded some tracks using Cakewalk Guitar Studio 2 and I realized that I would like the tempo to be slightly faster than the original recording. I used a seperate track for drums, bass & electric guitar. The guitar track is recorded with a Line6 POD 2.0 direct recording device.

I have used Cakewalk to speed-up the recording, but I didn't like the sound overall so I used Sound Forge WAV editor to speed up the tracks seperately. The drums sound fine but the guitar came out sounding different; my guess is that it sped-up the effects (i.e., reverb, etc) as well- this is probably the reason why it came out sounding different and undesirable..

Is there a way to fix this?? Is there other software out there (besides sound forge and Cakewalk GS2 that I have tried already) that CAN up the tempo and keep the integrity of the original sound (and of course the pitch)??

Another less obvious question is: Can I do it with the software that I already HAVE??

Thanks for your help,
-SR
 
I'm not sure if this will work (for what you want to do) but you can try it. Goto http://www.slowblast.com or http://www.slowgold.com and download their trial software. It slows down wav files (and CD tracks) without changing the pitch. SlowBlast is a scaled-down version of SlowGold.

These proggies are great for tabbing out songs too. Especially when trying to figure out unique chords in songs.
 
Prosonic Time Factory is the best time stretcher I've come across. You can put in the current tempo setting and the new tempo wanted.

cheers
John
 
But keep in mind that no matter which time strecther you try, they all have the inherent limitation that they are calculating new waveforms, and this can never be identical as the data you get from actually rerecording at the correct tempo. For small changes the difference is barely discernable, but the greater the change, the more discernable it gets... it's just the way it is.
 
WaveLab 3.0 has a pretty good time stretcher included with three options for quality. The lower quality options are good to use for a trial run of your process to see if thats how you want to do it. High quality setting is really good, and all of the settings preserve the pitch. There is also a setting to help keep from getting the "Mickey Mouse" effect on vocals, but as AlChuck says, if you stretch or compact too much, there are gonna be some not so nice side effects. So it is definitely an effect that should be used judiciously....but it can also save your bootie from time to time too, especially if you work in film or radio. bOb
 
FYI, to make long story short, with more experimentation I have found that Sound Forge XP 4.0 (which I already had as I have mentioned) was ok for the job.. I think it was a matter of saving the wav files in correct format to be edited and choosing the correct mode in SF xp. So I will stick with SF xp 4.0 for the time being.

A couple of other things to mention:
1. Prosoniq EZtimestretch (which is offshoot sofware of Time Factory) has a demo that will only process *10seconds* of data (and you can't save it of course) - I don't find 10 seconds very adequate to make a purchasing decision

2. It's definitely best (and alot less time-consuming) to pick the right overall tempo before you begin!

Thanks to all that replied,
-SR
 
When you time stretch like playing it slower you run into playing problems. I recently had a track that we wanted slower, I put it through prosonic time factory and you couldn't hear the processing but you could hear the band flamming the beat ;)

cheers
john
 
Yeah, I had a phrase that I wanted to play one whole step lower than the lowset I could possibly do it with my guitar in standard tuning. I tuned it down 1 whole step. What had originally been a indetectable imprecision in my playing become quite noticeable. I might try it again and be sure to play as accurately as I can and see if it's acceptable... or I might just tune the guitar down a whole step and do it for real...
 
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