how to change tempo without stretching audio

well, technically you HAVE to stretch the audio or you can't change the tempo, but you can stretch the audio without affecting the PITCH if that's what your real question is, depending on the version of Sonar you have (which you didn't mention).

the way to do that is to use Audio Snap - audio snap became available with version 6, IIRC.  check the help files on how to use audio snap and search youtube for cakewalk videos because there are some audio snap video tutorials by cakewalk on youtube.

as Beagle say's you'll have to use audio snap etc. but to add to that; It will probably trash the sound of the audio tracks.

No, you can use audio snap to create a tempo map from your already recorded tracks and it won't change the sound of your recording at all.

Get or create a track in your project that has a nice transient on every beat.  If there isn't one already, record a track of yourself tapping in time to what you have recorded. Bring up the audio snap palette and choose "edit clip map". Make sure that it chooses the correct tempo and that the transient markers are all lining up with your beats. Then choose "Set Project from Clip".

That should do it.  I'm going from memory on that... so maybe have a look at those functions in the help or the manual. I may have gotten the details wrong.

It sounded to me like OP just wants to change tempo of midi, not touching the audio. The difficulty then is to find the correct tempo as recorded already.

In S4 at least, I often changed tempo of part of song and did that without any stretching of audio, but regretted it did not have a lock of clip start to the tempo map. I had to move audio clips manually. And of course rerecord audio on the part with changed tempo.

Have not been doing this in S8.5 yet, but there must be a default streching of the audio then.

You must be able to turn this automatic audio stretch off is my assumption?

If not finding the disable of this stretching, I would just start another project with tempo set to what was the case you wanted(run audiosnap to find out), and then import to audio tracks from the old project. As waves import separately.

My guess is that it would work. Sonar cannot assume anything about tempo in wave files.

But there must be a disable of functionality, I'm sure of it and even remember reading about some keyboard shortcut for doing it.

I would search help which is very good in Sonar...

Bigdogs


You need to check the properties of your audio clips. You can choose whether audio is stretched in response to tempo change - right click on a clip and choose Clip Properties and go to Audio Stretching.

If you have an ordinary audio clip (not a groove clip) with Stretch to Project tempo unchecked, then changing the tempo has no effect on the audio and you can adjust the tempo until it matches your audio, assuming there is no variation in tempo.

Excellent, I knew it would be possible to disable. Thanks(even if answer of course is for OP).
I learned something today too.

Realize there is the potential that a rhythm keeping instrument like drums, might show the tempo errors of the music much more, than say a prerecorded track of another style of instrument, if tempo wasn't too much a concern when recording that instrument.  In other words, if it speeds up or slows down...even to small degrees, it will be much more apparent listening to tempo changes on a drum part.  That's why typically drums are one of the first, if not the first track to be recorded, that successive instrument and vocal tracks are lined up to.