equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed?

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martinv
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2013/04/30 22:20:03 (permalink)

equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed?

Is there a way to increase the speed/pitch of all audio tracks of a project in SONAR X2 by doing something like changing the sample rate?  Can the sample rate be fine tuned in small e.g. 1Hz-1kHz, increments?
 
The reason is to change the tempo without the artifacts of time stretch.  I understand the pitch changes using this method.  What I have done in the past was change the the pitch/tempo using this method on all the instruments, before vocals are recorded.  After that I record the final vocals to avoid the chipmunk effect. 
 
I am trying out the time strech features, and was impressed how well it sounded on drum tracks, bass, scratch vocal, scratch acoustic, (all processed as individual tracks) but am not sure how it will perform on a final mix..
 
Any thoughts, ideas?
 
 
post edited by martinv - 2013/05/01 20:57:19
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    DPStewart
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    Re:equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed? 2013/05/01 05:39:10 (permalink)
    The best way to do this "like Tape speed" is with REAPER. Period. It has a flawless pitch control slider right in the center of the main window and it works EXACTLY as you would expect. And YES I have used it on complete mixes and it's perfect. I would NOT use Sonar's time-stretch for a mix although I do use it for occasional individual tracks. Reaper is cheap - I consider it a must-have tool, just like your favorite VST plugins.
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    martinv
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    Re:equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed? 2013/05/01 21:05:11 (permalink)
    Thanks for the reply.  How could I use Reaper to do this?  It appears to be an entire recording software package.  Would I have to transfer files to Reaper, then back?  I was hoping for something like "just go the pitch/speed menu and turn the knob":)
     
    I'm slightly surprised SONAR doesnt have a feature like this built in as it seems to be a far simpler process compared to time stretching algorithms.. 
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    Kalle Rantaaho
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    Re:equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed? 2013/05/02 08:52:33 (permalink)
    I haven't noticed any artefacts in sound using SONARs "Process> Audio > Length. IIRC you can choose whether to change the pitch or not. I've only used it for subtle speeding of exported projects without changing pitch. I don't know how big changes it's capable of with good quality.

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    razor
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    Re:equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed? 2013/05/02 15:56:33 (permalink)
    I may have misunderstood the application here, but it you're looking for a tape stop effect (like in Scream & Shout), Wavelab 7 has that ability and it would apply to the entire mix. 

    You would have all the tracks bounced in Sonar down to a stereo track (or mono if you want) then edit that bounced file in Wavelab and process the file with the pitch bend.

    Here's an excerpt from their manual:

    4.6.13 Pitch bend
    This dialog allows you to change the pitch of a sound over time. Note that changing the pitch
    using Pitch bend will affect its duration unless length preservation is activated.
    Using an envelope you can 'draw' the curve you wish the pitch to follow. The pitch offset is
    displayed along the vertical ruler of the envelope and the range the envelope effects can be
    adjusted using the spin control. Positive pitch values produce sounds with a higher pitch and
    of shorter length, negative values produce sounds with a lower pitch and of longer length.
     
    If length preservation is activated, you can choose the algorithm that is used to perform the
    pitch bend operation. Depending on the type of audio material you are processing, choose
    the appropriate mode. For more information on the different modes, use the "What's This?"
    tool. You can also adjust the quality used when processing the pitch bend. The quality setting
    and the selected mode will affect the processing time for this effect.
    This function could be used for creating the classic 'tape stop' effect, or for blending the
    tempo/pitch of one track into another, for example.


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    #5
    DPStewart
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    Re:equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed? 2013/05/03 04:17:43 (permalink)
    Yes - you have to use REAPER as a separate DAW.... - but don't fret because it's not that hard. ...-If you know you need to apply the "tape speed" type speed-up or slow-down to an entire mix - then you can just do it to the final mixed down file. ...- If you need to speed it up or slow it down and then add more tracks to that - then make a ruff mix of the tracks that are already done and bring it into REAPER, find the new speed you want it to be at, tune your instrument accordingly and do your overdubs. Now, if you want to finish your mix back in SONAR then YES, you will have to import those new overdub tracks you recorded, but that's really not hard at all - just a few "render and import" steps. It's fast. BUT - those new tracks will not be in tune with your original SONAR project...so.... - the best thing to ask yourself is this: "Can I finish my project all in SONAR at the speed it's already at, and then take the final mix into REAPER to get the speed I want?" . . . Strangely - there are nearly NO DAWs that have this speed control feature...I always wondered why myself. . . . EDIT: - I don't find REAPER as awesome a mixdown DAW as SONAR, but if you can get most of your instrument tracks mixed as stems in SONAR before exporting them to load into REAPER, then you can certainly finish the vocals in REAPER with a very minimal learning curve as REAPER will of course see your VST plugins just as SONAR does.
    post edited by DPStewart - 2013/05/03 04:22:42
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    martinv
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    Re:equivalent of increasing or decreasing tape speed? 2013/05/05 18:40:24 (permalink)
    Thanks for the replies.  For this time I ended up doing this:
    1.  select all tracks
    2.  open audiosnap,
    3.  Selected "clip follows project" and "Auto Strech" from it's drop down menu.
    4.  Set offline rendering to 'Radius Mix'.
    5.  This probably shouldn't be neccessary but I had to run "Bounce to clips" on all tracks.  (Sonar Bug? see below)
    6.  Change tempo in the main transport module (went from 105BPM to 107BPM)
    7.  Bounce to tracks again to get a higher quality render than the 'live' version.

    I had to do step 4, because the time strech did not apply to all clips even though I had them all selected.  This appears to be a bug.

    The plan is to only keep the drum tracks, the other tracks were all scratch tracks and wil be replaced.  Now that the tempo is final (I hope), we will resume adding the rest of the tracks.   I will probably try the Reaper pitch/time method when I get more time.
    #7
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