Drag and Drop

[Melodyman1]

Hello PT family,

I was wondering why my audio slows down whenever drag/drop it in Pro-Tools. It's fine when I import it but drag and drop just slows it down. Even if the audio is let's 90BPM and I set the tempo the same in PT before I drag/drop the audio it again slows it down.

[Darryl Ramm]

Every one of these problems is caused by sample rate mismatches between what is being imported and the session. Including often the user being confused what the content sample rate is, and occasionally the audio file containers/headers having the wrong sample rate in them. If you are managing an import are you using SRC (sample rate conversion?). You can guesstimate the error by the amount of speed up/slow down. And you'll likely see it's the difference between 44.1kHZ and 48 kHz or other common sample rates.

[tope d]

Thanks Darryl!

another to you can check is the Preferences under Processing.

Select ALL FILES under "Drag and Drop from Desktop Conforms to Session Tempo:

But the best way to import is to click on FILE > Import Audio > select audio and it will convert the audio files to the correct format that the session will accept.

[Darryl Ramm]

Be careful, tempo settings or perceived settings are typically not relevant here. Most audio files we use have no concept of tempo and no tempo data. What is typically happening with importing or dragging and dropping AIFF/AIFC or WAV files is a simple sample rate mismatch.

OK, that's most cases, but it would have helped for the OP to say exactly what file/container formats they are dragging and dropping.

With normal AIFF/AIFC or WAV files "Drag and Drop from Desktop Conforms to Session Tempo" will just result in the file being imported as tick based, no tempo adjustment/correction is done any actual pitch changes to the imported audio happen because of sample rate conversion, not anything to do with tempo. A more common preferences issue would be just not having "Don't Convert Sample Rate on Import" checked and that will disable SRC for drag and drop.