Does export sample rate bypass global sample rate?

[juxtaboy]

Dear experts,

Here is my situation:
I was mixing several projects consisting of audio sampled at 48K that my friend recorded and passed to me. While I was working on it my global settings were set to a sample rate of 44.1K (which I only discovered later). I exported the audio, choosing 48K for the sample rate of my export.

My question is this: Did Ableton Live resample my 48K audio down to 44.1K as per the global settings, and then resample it back up to 48K for the export (degrading the sound quality in the process), or did it simply bounce 48K audio to a 48K export, bypassing the global prefs which were set to 44.1K?

I know I could just go back and re export all of the sessions again with the global prefs to 48K, but A) I don't want to spend the time doing so unless necessary, and B) I want to understand the relationship between the global sample rate and the export sample rate.

Any know-how would be much appreciated!
Cheers!

[Tarekith]

Live will do the SRC conversion on the fly if there's a sample rate mismatch, but it will also only record at the current project sample rate as well. Long story short, the original files with the sample rate of 48k probably stayted that way for the export, but if you recorded anything new on your machine it was recorded at 44.1.

[juxtaboy]

Thanks for your reply - in this case you are right and my bounces were fine, but I just discovered that there's more to it than that.

I didn't notice it before, but when you are choosing the sample rate in the export window, there will be a little speaker icon next to the sample rate that matches that of your global preferences. If you choose an export sample rate that's the same or higher, then it says below "The project will be rendered at xxx Hz", but if you choose a sample rate that's lower, it says "project will be rendered at xxx Hz (as per the global prefs) and downsampled to yyy Hz".

Therefore:
If Audio clips are 48, prefs is 44.1 OR 48, and export is 48 it will be not do any resampling.
If Audio clips are 48, prefs is 44.1 OR 48, and export is 44.1 it will resample once (from 48 to 44.1).
If Audio clips are 44.1, prefs is 48, and export is 44.1 it will resample TWICE (from 44.1 to 48 and back to 44.1), causing sound degradation and artifacts