Ableton Forum

Hi everyone

I seem to get this problem on and off, when I re-open a track I'm working on, it's all in time at the BPM I recorded it in but everything is playing ether to fast or to slow. It's happened on other tracks but the track in question was all recorded at 120 bpm, it has no Midi on it as someone sent me a instrumental they wanted me to write lyrics and do vocals on.

If I change the BPM it only changes the speed of the music track and nothing else, I've read it has something to do with warping of samples but there is actually nothing clear on how to stop it, it seems do it even if I switch warping of samples off, Basically nothing running at the same speed I recorded it in.

Sometimes I have sorted this by quitting Ableton and re-loadeding it, or turning the Mac off and turning it on and it's played at the right speed. I've had this same problem on my PC and I now have a brand new Mac, a Mac should really shouldn't have a issue running Ablton.

It's actually becoming quite annoying now because I just cant get on and finish something without a load of hassle. Is there a fix for this I can go through, has someone else has this problem and knows how to stop it, could someone give me the steps to go through and not a load of computer jargan.

I would be very greatful

thank you

I'm wondering if this is the case where you have an audio file being at one sample rate while your audio card is running at another.
Ie if your audio file is 48khz and your audio card is set to play at 44khz then they'll play at differen speeds.
I think this usually happens on lower end or onboard audio cards.

Or maybe it doesn't have to do with that. Worth looking into.

If that's so and your right, I've read nothing before hand about Ableton not running on a band new Mac, or has problems with the sound cards used on them, I usually have the sound running through my interface.

I cant see that putting the audio track in, record everything at the right speed and everything's fine, you save it, go away, re-load it when I want to work some more on it but then everything is playing at the wrong tempo or warped to sound to fast or slow. Recorded audio shouldn't be rocket science.

Right, and Live does do it's own re-sampling, so it isn't just a Live thing, or maybe I should say 'wasn't', I don't know if that problem is obsolete at this point, but it was a somewhat common problem awhile ago that was mainly an issue between the OS and audio driver. I do remember people on here that did have that problem though.

Had the same problem and the previous poster pointed me in the right direction: the in/out sample rate somehow got changed. Once I re-set it in preferences to 48000 it was fine again. Can't tell you how many hours I wasted on this problem, Ableton!

Thanks very much. I just had the same problem and found that the sample rate had changed. It seemed to be after I disconnected my firewire hard drive that stores the samples that the problem occurred. So I'm glad someone else spent hours trying so solve this.

Higgs Bason wrote:Hi everyone

I seem to get this problem on and off, when I re-open a track I'm working on, it's all in time at the BPM I recorded it in but everything is playing ether to fast or to slow. It's happened on other tracks but the track in question was all recorded at 120 bpm, it has no Midi on it as someone sent me a instrumental they wanted me to write lyrics and do vocals on.

If I change the BPM it only changes the speed of the music track and nothing else, I've read it has something to do with warping of samples but there is actually nothing clear on how to stop it, it seems do it even if I switch warping of samples off, Basically nothing running at the same speed I recorded it in.

Well, this is indeed likely to be connected to the warping. Did it really play correctly before you saved? It could be that you have permission issues on the project folder. If so, the track would play back correctly, but the warp info would fail to be saved to the proper place. Please check the permissions. What OS are you on?

I've noticed that some recordings play back at the wrong speed after importing and I've had had to manually fix the tempo used in that audio clip. You seem to have a more serious problem than that though.

Hey!

The clips from a friend that I had imported were not lining up with the scratch track. Someone here mentioned that they adjusted the tempo on the imported clips.

I opened the clips and sure enough they were between 1 and 2 beats away from the tempo that we had all begun at.

Not sure how the clips had drifted since my friend had used my tempo to record his. However I am very grateful for the help.

Thanks!

This post is very insightful, thank you!

For those still confused about what happens, sometimes when you import audio files, the tempo of the file isn't aligned with the project tempo. If you import something and the clips aren't lining up, start by clicking on the waveform in the bottom right. That will open a menu on the left of the enlarged waveform. In the panel, there is a tempo(bpm) module. If the BPM of the clip isn't the same as the BPM of your project, that's your issue. If the BPM of all your clips match the BPM of the project, your problem is probably related to the sample rate(read above).

Happy music making!