Fixing a mix: Pitching/tempo change by changing samplerate?

[William Choi]

Ok, I thought maybe I'd post this in mastering since it's more geared to this forum and I'd might get a better answer than "wha?"

Hi,
I've been using this technique on the majority of my mixdowns. What it is is that i want to change the pitch about 1 step up(in guitar tuning terms) or 1 semitone.
I do this by increasing the samplerate by 2,000 Samples. So if I recorded at
44,100Hz I change it to 46,100 or if I recorded with 48,000 I change it to 50,000Hz.
This gives me a pretty accurate step change but also increases the tempo slightly.
Now my problem is not with the tempo change(infact I kinda like it cuz it's only a slight change). my problem is down sampling back to 44.1.
I've noticed that some things with quick attacks sound kinda warped.it's a very minute phenomenon but is quite noticable when
listening to the song before and after the pitch change is done.
I guess this is mostly due to the quality and parameteres of my downsample processing.
Can somebody offer me their wisdom on pitching with samplerates and downsampling afterwards? I find this technique to be quite a trade tradition. much like how the beatles used to speed up their recordings.

---oh, and does having it at 32 bit as opposed to 16 have any affect on the quality of downsampling?---

 

[Gidge]

I dont believe a sample rate conversion will affect the pitch or tempo...what you are wanting is a "pitch shift" effect....lots of editors do it....

Goldwave will do it www.goldwave.com

 

[William Choi]

Im not talking about samplerate conversion or downsampling for pitch shifting.
Its more on the lines of an option called "change samplerate but do not resample"
It's found in CEP as well as Soundforge. the change is instantanious(doesn't processes the file at all) It just reads/plays it at a different sampling frequency(cycles per second) there fore the faster the samples are read,the high the pitch is.

I hope that clears things up. I'm usually misunderstood anyways.

 

[vox]

If a sound was recorded using 44,100 samples every second and it is 1 second long then it contains......44,100 samples, if you set your software to a sample rate of 22,050 samples every second, it will take 2 seconds to play back 44,100 samples, making it longer and lower in pitch, just like a vinyl record at the wrong speed.

But then you probably knew that and just misread the original post.