Speeding up a track while mastering

[Sonic_Liberator]

Hi there,

 

Awhile back there was a discussion here about speeding up a track during mastering in order to tighten up the bass, and glue the track a bit better. I can’t find this post and this is something I want to experiment with.

 

What would be the acceptable setting for such a task without making it sounding unnatural? Any tutorials?

What kind of software would be preferable for this type of effect?

 

I believe, in the past people used to prefer Sound Forge to achieve most transparent results. Is it still the case?

Thank you

 

[Anderton]

First we need to establish something...when you say speeding up, can the pitch go up a bit as well, or do you want to speed up tempo while retaining pitch? My recommendation is allowing the pitch and tempo change to track each other.

[Sonic_Liberator]

Thank you for responding!

 

Yes, the pitch can go up, otherwise it won't do much to the frequency spectrum. My main goal here is to tighten up the track frequency wise, and push the tempo. I used to do it with a portastudio cassette deck and the results were usually very good. I was able to tighten up everything across the entire spectrum without any unwanted glitches. Now I'm looking for a similar solution in the digital environment.

[MikeRivers]

You'll push the tempo, but I don't understand what you're thinking when you say "tighten up the track frequency wise." Unless you make a radical change in the tempo, the frequencies won't change very much, and they'll all change together so the balance across the spectrum won't really change.

 

Have you tried playing with a parametric equalizer?

[Anderton]

I know the effect you want...speeding up makes the overall sound a bit brighter, tightens up the timing, alters the vocal formants a bit, etc. This is something i do all the time in SONAR; I wrote an article about it for Sound on Sound. Check out the second technique in the article, "Fine-Tuning Varispeed."

 

Sound Forge can do it as well, but I'm not in front of my music computer so can't give the step by step...will do so later.

[Sonic_Liberator]

I know the effect you want...speeding up makes the overall sound a bit brighter' date=' tightens up the timing, alters the vocal formants a bit, etc. This is something i do all the time in SONAR; I wrote an article about it for Sound on Sound. Check out the second technique in the article, "Fine-Tuning Varispeed."

 

Sound Forge can do it as well, but I'm not in front of my music computer so can't give the step by step...will do so later.

 

Yes! Thank you! This is what I was looking for.

 

Unfortunately, I don't own SONAR. If you have a moment, could you please post how to do it in Sound Forge...This would be great.

 

As I said, I was often doing this with my Tape recorders: TASCAM 32 half-track, Revox PR9 and Portastudio cassette deck, which had the best high frequency compression effect I have ever heard.

 

P.S The Sound on Sound article is phenomenal!

[AlamoJoe]

When I was recording on a 4 track cassette I used to record the drum machine first, and sped up. That way when I went back to tempo, when I got the sync right anyway, it made the drums sound thicker. When I could get the tempo on the drum machine fairly well locked into what the tempo would be when I dropped the tape speed back.

But I digress.

.

[philboking]

Reaper is very good at this.

[Sonic_Liberator]

Reaper is very good at this.

 

I'm thinking of moving all my productions into the Reaper environment. If you don't mind, I'd also like to know how to do it in Reaper.

[Sonic_Liberator]

Gentle bump.. :-)

 

[Anderton]

In Sound Forge, choose Effects > Pitch > Shift and you'll get a dialog box like the one below...and there you have it Just remember NOT to check Preserve Duration.

 

[Sonic_Liberator]

Thank you very much Craig!

So, it seems like you sped it up by 1%. I assume it sounded good. Did you try to push it more? Would you prefer the quality of this function in Sonar or Sound Forge? Thank you again for posting the screen capture.

[Anderton]

Thank you very much Craig!

So, it seems like you sped it up by 1%. I assume it sounded good.

 

That was just arbitrary to take the screen shot, but I typically speed up by 20 cents.

 

Did you try to push it more?

 

Sometimes I'll go as high as 30-40 cents. All depends on the song...

 

Do you prefer the quality of this function in Sonar or Sound Forge?

 

There's no significant sonic difference, they're both doing the same math to the signal. The obvious advantage to me is I can keep everything in SONAR, where I do my tracking and mixing, instead of having to export and work with another program. Another is that I can bounce a file several times into SONAR tracks, use different amounts of pitch shift for each bounce, enable exclusive solo, and audition which one I like best.

 

You can do something similar in Sound Forge by opening up different windows, but comparing them isn't as seamless and soloing tracks in SONAR.

[nice keetee]

in reaper grab rate slider

[philboking]

There is a slider at the bottom of the screen. You can:

- enter a number relative to 1 (for example, 1.059463 will speed it up ~6% and pitch it up 1 half-step)

- right click and select whether to keep pitch the same or alter it with speed changes

- or just slide it around to see what happens

a double click will return it to 1