Recorded Audio Has Higher Pitch and Faster (NOT A SAMPLE RATE PROBLEM!!!)

[BenMeyers]

I'm going to edit this reply with my results after following all the steps people have suggested now that I have time. I'll post a separate reply when I do so. In the meantime I had replies to some other parts.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Yes duh we get that, and Pro Tools may not be setting them correctly in the interfaces which is what people here are trying to help you to work out/fix. Again you *do* have a sample rate problem... This is what causes these behaviors. It's not a little wizard living inside your computer that magically causes this. You need to find what is going wrong, what thing is failing to set rates or what two separate things are fighting each other setting different rates etc. not keeping arguing you know what the problem is or is not.

Once again this is the absolute wrong attitude you should be using to communicate with someone you intend to help. Seriously you should really stop with that kind of talk. It doesn't do any good but tick people off. I'm no idiot. Stop treating me like one. If you want to help people you shouldn't do it this way. It's really. Freaking. Annoying. Not to mention... If you're no jerk why come across as one?? Why would you do that? Doesn't make sense to me, personally.

OK, good some useful info. But you need to slow down and do what is asked. You are clearly lost, for starters the "playback engine" in Pro Tools affects recording and playback. I want to know for sure what exact drivers you have selected as the playback engine.

I select whatever interface driver I'm using in the playback engine. If I have my AudioBox connected, I have that selected. MBox? That playback engine. None of the above? ASIO4ALL. It plays back the same way with all three.

Everything you are describing is consistent with Windows having control of the device and setting the sample rate different than the session. Yet you are still not answering that question asked multiple times. So try again...

Trash pro tools prefs.

Reboot your computer.

Connect up your 2x2.

What driver version is installed? (Post a screenshot of the windows devices driver panel for that driver).

V1.3 of the AudioBox USB Control Panel with Monitor Mixer and Driver. The MBox Mini is V1.1.8 of the MBox Mini Control Panel.

Make sure windows is not using the device. Post a screen shot of the windows sound control panel showing what the Windows sound device is. If you don't know what that is ask.

I'm pretty sure it is not because Windows sounds always come through my speakers when I use my interface. I reinstalled the AudioBox driver so I'll restart and check when I go through all the other steps. I'm 90% sure it is not using it though.

Make sure sample rate in the 2x2 control panel is 48 kHz. In fact heck lets set it to 44.1 exit the control panel, go back to the control panel again and set it to 48. Post a screen shot of that setting in the control panel.

Create a new empty Pro Tools session at 48kHz. Post a screen shot of the session settings and the playback engine dialog panel.

Record a metronome at 100bpm into a mic connected to the 2x2 input. Does that playback OK? If not drop the file somewhere on a file sharing service and post a link here.

I've set the interfaces to the different bitrates before but shall try it again because why the heck not. I tried making the session at 48 before but will try again after trashing preferences etc. I can't record a metronome at home since I don't have any mics at home. I can record a note on guitar played at a tempo and then if it's messed up do the same in Reaper and put up both files so you can still tell what it should sound like since it's working in Reaper.

Why are you doing anything with "stereo mix"? Stereo mix as in the Windows special sound device Stereo Mix? Or if you are selecting a "Stereo Mix" session type then that *is* a template, what you were asked not to do. (Just in case session templates are corrupted).

Stereo mix in the i/o settings. In my PT11 at least there is no template called stereo mix.

Create a totally empty session. Then create one mono track in it. Assign the input of that track to your input a mic is connected to and assign the output to the 2x2 outputs (I don't know what they will be called).

Will do when I do everything after rebooting and edit here the results.

[Darryl Ramm]

Look I don't really care what you think about me or anything else. What I want you to do is help yourself and stop the crazy talk about you knowing what something is or is not and then expecting people to help you.

And in this case it's almost certainly a sample rate problem. Lots of every experienced folks telling you the same thing. If you had more experience/had better help you would have realized that from the start. OK. Now you are over what it can't be there is some hope you will solve the problem.

Do not assume that any software telling you what it thinks the sample rate is is necessarily correct. Windows audio devices in particular have too many paths for things to set sample rates in an interface. This is one reason why profession interfaces with sample rate displays on their front panel can be great for debugging issues in the studio. What is going on here is either some piece of software missetting the sample rate or two different pieces of software setting different sample rates and one of them winning. Pro Tools has issues at times with Focusrite drivers (which is why I'm wanting you to manually set sample rates in the driver panel by hand, before you start the session). If that is not Pro Tools vs. Windows sound, it may be some other audio app you have running. You need to make sure all other audio apps are closed, including some that may be running in the background without you realizing it. Use Windows Activity monitor to check for programs/processes that look like they may be audio related.

If computer audio is coming out the computer built in speakers are the same time the interface is connected then yes that likely means Windows sound is not using the interface. But it depends on the program you are using there, so be paranoid and go actually see what is set in the Windows Sound control panel (while the interface is connected/powered on).

Look at the other thread I pointed to you to see what mess others have to jump through at times to get sample rates working OK.

Make sure you follow instructions to trash prefs (under the "help help you" link up top of this page).

Try things in the sequence I suggested before. If things don't work at 48 kHz you can always try 44.1 kHz if only to get something working.

If you have a smart phone there are lots of metronome apps recordings a metronome is a great way to confirm what is going on. And you should be able to reverse from that what exact sample rate the interface was actually using.

Post screenshots, some of those may help folks here realize what is going on.

If you can't work out what is going on here, find some conflict etc. Then you may not be very far away from a Pro Tools reinstall or at worse a complete Windows and apps reinstall on this computer. Anal-retentive checking now, posting screenshots here etc, is better than ending up there if it is not necessary.

[mesaone]

Darryl, you can come off as abrasive. But I know, and everyone else knows, you know your sht and you always go out of your way to help. It's tough love on the DUC, and you deserve a lot of respect for that.

BenMeyers you really ought to set aside your frustration and check out how much time he's put into trying to help you narrow down and fix your problem.

That is all

[Top Jimmy]

It's worth stating that the problem likely began right at the very beginning of the session. If you don't understand how the problem originally occurred, you can't understand how to fix it. Follow Benoni's video above or post your session with audio files on Dropbox and almost any one of us will demonstrate the fix.

[BenMeyers]

Well seeing as several people replied and there's really no need to edit my post I'll just post a new reply.

I trashed my preferences, reinstalled my AudioBox driver/control panel, rebooted my PC and re-tested. Still happening. Here's the screenshots and two audio files. I realized I could just record a metronome into my interface without a mic when you mentioned smartphones since I could just connect the out of my phone to my AudioBox... Derp. The wav files are from the test sessions that were at both 48k and 44.1k. The bpm is set to 100, using the 7Metronome for Android app on the "electric" sound setting. I included a rendered out correct version of the metronome done in Reaper for comparison.

Link to folder on my Drive: https://drive.google.com/folderview?...zA&usp=sharing

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

It's worth stating that the problem likely began right at the very beginning of the session. If you don't understand how the problem originally occurred, you can't understand how to fix it. Follow Benoni's video above or post your session with audio files on Dropbox and almost any one of us will demonstrate the fix.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwn...ew?usp=sharing

There's the 44.1k test session with the Metronome if someone wants to take a stab at an actual session file themselves.

Thanks for all the help, guys. And yes, I do really appreciate how much time you're taking for me, Darryl, despite how you come across at first.

[Top Jimmy]

Originally Posted by BenMeyers

Link to folder on my Drive: https://drive.google.com/folderview?...zA&usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bwn...ew?usp=sharing

There's the 44.1k test session with the Metronome if someone wants to take a stab at an actual session file themselves.

So the only thing this reveals is that the file in Pro Tools is exactly twice as fast as the reference. i.e. 200 bpm vs 100 bpm. And yes, it is pitched up exactly an octave.

So how did this happen? There's no instant answer. The sped up file is stamped as 44,100 so it's likely a combination of sample rate error and/or incorrect sample rate conversion. I was able to import the correct metronome file just fine into your 44.1 session and nothing weird happened. It was correct pitch and 100 bpm.

If this issue came from sample rate error, it could only happen if you record material into a 44.1 session but the sample clock is actually running at 22.05. Then, when you play it back when the clock is really at 44.1, the audio is twice as fast and up an octave.

[Darryl Ramm]

The 44.1 kHz wav file header identifies it correctly as a 44.1 kHz file.

The 48 KHz wav file header identifies it correctly as a 48 kHz file.

The Reaper file claims to be 48 kHz.

But... both the Pro Tools wav files are showing the metronome at exactly twice the rate of the reaper file you provided. I initially thought that maybe the metronome was set in 4/8 but then realized it was exactly twice the rate of the Reaper sample.

So something is happening here that is supposedly impossible since your interface only supports 44.1 and 48 KHz. Yet Pro Tools or the interface is getting itself in a state where it looks like the interface is running at *exactly* half the speed of the session. And it's usually certainly the interface side that is the issue, or Pro Tools not setting it right, it is really never that Pro Tools gets confused about it's own session sample rate... although in this case...

The Audiobox USB only supports 44.1 and 48kHz, it's bigger bother supports 88.2 kHz and 96KHz, and they may be the same hardware inside each box, one just feature crippled, that might help explain how the interface could get into a 2X faster sampling rate, but it's behaving here as if it is exactly 1/2 X session sample rate. And it's that 1/2 part that is killing me. (and who knows what chipset is in the interface and even if its chip hardware can support 22 kHz and 24 kHz sample rates) That's easy to imagine with hardware faults in the interface, but it works here with other DAWs etc.

I'm going to think on this one more. But at this point if trashing prefs has not helped I would just go for a complete reinstall of Pro Tools. There are some low level engineering tests (with oscilloscope on the ADC chip) I could think of if the system was sitting in front of me and I *had* to debug it, but not really worth doing.

[ArKay99]

Read the whole thread and I don't use Pro Tools with Windows, but I've been a Windows programmer for many years. It looks like the smart guys are in the groove and have a line of help going. I don't know if you have tried this or not, and I'm on Win 7 with my desktop, so...here is what you might want to try.

In Win 7 I go into Control Panel and click on the Sound app. That brings up a dialog with a playback, recording, sounds, and communications tabs. On the playback tab it shows a few devices and one that is the default. In my case it's the Realtek High Definition Audio. If I click on the tab that says advanced it brings up a panel that contains a dropdown that shows what the current sample rate of the driver is set at and if you click on that it allows you to select what sample rate you might want to change it to. If this driver has taken over your audio playback or recording I/O then the sample rate selected here may show the error. You can confirm this by changing the sample rate in the dropdown.

The above is all predicated on whether Win 10 has similar control dialogs and if you can get that place in the driver settings.

This is just an FYI and hopefully will either confirm or eliminate a possible cause of your issue.

[joachim]

Originally Posted by BenMeyers

...affects audio I record through Pro Tools. ...

Did you unintentionally pressed Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar to start recording (versus correctly Ctrl+Spacebar or 3 on the Num Pad) ?
If so, that would be a half-speed recording which results in a pitch-up of 1 octave upon playback.

Maybe a stuck Shift-key. Select a clip and press "M" : does it nudge the clip or does it mute the track ?

[TOM@METRO]

Originally Posted by joachim

Did you unintentionally pressed Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar to start recording (versus correctly Ctrl+Spacebar or 3 on the Num Pad) ?
If so, that would be a half-speed recording which results in a pitch-up of 1 octave upon playback.

Maybe a stuck Shift-key. Select a clip and press "M" : does it nudge the clip or does it mute the track ?

I was wondering the same thing as I read through the last few posts.