importing different sample rate files

[donito]

Whats up folks, I'm new to Ableton Live and I didn't find the answer on how to deal with different sample rate files that we throw up in the project. I think it is real time resampling, consuming processing and playing back at a "high quality" as we set on the preferences, but I don't think any real time resampling can really be hight quality.

I'm coming from reaper where every audio clip gets a sign that is at a different sample rate from the project, and we have a few algorithms to choose in the preferences in regards to how good the real time resampling will be (or the ratio between quality and cpu efficiency), but giving you always the option to just process the resample at best offline quality right away at the arrangement, which I always do, and a lot of times the difference is huge, specially when you starts processing the audio.

Seems like live is just playing back different sample rates converting in real time, and I have a feeling this can't end up well.

How you deal with that ? You just don't care or what you do about that ? I didn't see an option to offline process the resample.

[maximejerryfraisse]

Did you check the Audio Fact Sheet section of the manual? You might find some answers in point 36.3.2 Sample Rate Conversion/Transposition.

Ableton clearly recommends in point 36.4 Tips for Achieving Optimal Sound Quality in Live:

Avoid using samples that are at different sample rates within the same project. If you want to work with such files, we recommend that you first convert them to the sample rate set for your audio interface in an offline application that is optimized for this task.

That being said, I’ve personally never experienced any issues or noticed any clear audible artefacts when using files with different sample rates in the same project. I follow the rule when I need to believe that what I do is optimal sound quality, and sometimes I don’t care.