I have been working on a project set to 96khz. All the recordings are made in 96khz. It is a complex project with 100+ tracks (not easily re imported etc) and this morning I noticed that Ableton has changed the sample rate to 44.1khz. All my previous saves are now set to 44.1 as well!!! My question is if I now change back to 96khz does it read from the original files ... or does it re-process the files? I'm actually really cross about this - it has happened before and I consider it the worst part of the Ableton design.
Any help is hugely appreciated.
Ableton Sample Rate Change
Re: Ableton Sample Rate Change
Your report is unfortunately not very helpful to spot exactly what the problem is, because it just discribes a phenomenon. In any digital system with more than one device there needs to be
- a Clock source (Master)
- the Slaves need to adjust to the master sample rate (Slaves) (leaving sample rate conversion between different samplerate environments aside)
So usually a DAW will adjust to the clock of the audio-device that is set in its preferences. This can be the Operating System Default audio device or another audiodevice (virtual or physical) that is available to the system (e. g. your audio-interface).
There are several combinations of settings that might cause samplerate mismatch:
- The DAW on loading the project will fetch the sample rate that the chosen audio device within the DAW broadcasts automatically. Hence the computer system audio device could have changed samplerate by another application or usage, or your external Audio Interface changed its samplerate for some reason.
- The DAW is set to force (request) the samplerate the project has to the audio device clock master (some DAWs allow adjustments here) so that the chosen audio device sets itsself to the chosen project sample rate.
If a DAW operates properly it will not change any source audio file material but will resample in realtime if the chosen audio device samplerate mismatches the project sample rate.
Some 15 to 20 years ago things had been worse because a samplerate mismatch could lead to the following problems amongst others:
- the DAW plays back the session with wrong samplerate so pitch and speed changed
- the DAW could record at another sample rate than the AD-Converter was set to so the audio-file header sample rate information got the wrong value and it would playback with different pitch in a DAW project with the intended samplerate value. The user had to edit the file header to change to the correct value. SoundHack was a freeware tool at that time to accomplish that.
regards
- a Clock source (Master)
- the Slaves need to adjust to the master sample rate (Slaves) (leaving sample rate conversion between different samplerate environments aside)
So usually a DAW will adjust to the clock of the audio-device that is set in its preferences. This can be the Operating System Default audio device or another audiodevice (virtual or physical) that is available to the system (e. g. your audio-interface).
There are several combinations of settings that might cause samplerate mismatch:
- The DAW on loading the project will fetch the sample rate that the chosen audio device within the DAW broadcasts automatically. Hence the computer system audio device could have changed samplerate by another application or usage, or your external Audio Interface changed its samplerate for some reason.
- The DAW is set to force (request) the samplerate the project has to the audio device clock master (some DAWs allow adjustments here) so that the chosen audio device sets itsself to the chosen project sample rate.
If a DAW operates properly it will not change any source audio file material but will resample in realtime if the chosen audio device samplerate mismatches the project sample rate.
Some 15 to 20 years ago things had been worse because a samplerate mismatch could lead to the following problems amongst others:
- the DAW plays back the session with wrong samplerate so pitch and speed changed
- the DAW could record at another sample rate than the AD-Converter was set to so the audio-file header sample rate information got the wrong value and it would playback with different pitch in a DAW project with the intended samplerate value. The user had to edit the file header to change to the correct value. SoundHack was a freeware tool at that time to accomplish that.
regards