Guitarhacker
Are you using a USB mic to record this vocal track?
Compressor and other FX should not affect the speed of playback but using a USB mic can and will affect the playback since it is not synced with internal clocks to the factory sound card....Your computer see a USB mic as a second sound card.......... the two will not be in sync and as a result they will drift..... and there is also a possibility that the sampling rates between the two different cards are not the same. A difference there will also cause problems.
Yes, it is USB! A Behringer U-Control UCA202. I use it for all my recording (several times a week).
Well, that makes some sense, though I've not noticed this problem before. This is the 16th song I've written and recorded in the last 14 months, using the same equipment, software and setup (other recording jobs I do don't depend on synchronous tracks).
Of course, there's a reason I use the USB dongle: my built-in card introduces all kinds of noise to the recordiing. It's useless. And, since it's a Netbook, I can't simply pop a new sound card in.
Oh, well. I'll have to try my backup laptop (which my wife thinks I'm going to ship to her sister --- hehehe!).
BTW, this isn't a "speed of playback" issue. It plays back at the same speed in all software, regardless of plug-ins, etc. This is a record-time issue.
BTW, I've thought of a work-around. I opened the original Band-in-a-Box project with the vocal recording as an audio track (file of the same name), to see if it would have an effect on playback if I changed tempo, and IT DID! So, if I open the file without the audio track, change the tempo up, save the file and close it, then open the file with the audio track, then I should be able to change the tempo back down and it should play right. I'll have to do my mixing from BB, but that's the only solution I have (if it works).
BTW, I tried using a timestretch function. That introduces a lot of pops (wave cuts; you can see them if you zoom in enough). That makes it useless. A better answer along those lines would be to take each audio bit (from silence to silence) and paste-mix it together on top of a made up noise track (same noise a the original recording at silence), using a melody track from the project as a tempo guide. I could do this in Sony Sound Forge (but I'm too lazy!).
Thanks for your response! I think I know what to do. Anyway, I can define a test scenario and figure out if it's the compressor or the USB audio dongle. If I figure it out, and can make the time to write again, I'll let you know!
Thanks again,
Richard Allan Stauch
Ft. Myers, FL