Pitch Shifter

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 10 Dec 2002 11:27 am

I've got a backup steel training tape that I is about 13 cents flat; tuning notes on the tape.

I figured I'd record it on my computer, shift it 13 cents and burn a CD. My problem is that while I can shift it during playback(with SoundBlaster's EFX AudioHQ), I cannot apply the shift to and save the WAV file.

I have Creative Wave Studio and also the Sound Editor in Roxio Easy Creator 5 Platinum. The latter will only shift by semitones and not cents.

I've still got Roxio on a 30-day trial and am otherwise completely satisfied with it. Anyone know of a free or inexpensive program or plug-in to shift a WAV file by cents or hertz?

Thanks,

Ron

Larry Bell · Post by **Larry Bell** » 10 Dec 2002 12:56 pm

Ron,
Wave file editors like CoolEdit and GoldWave (shareware) and the more expensive products like SoundForge offer these features. Last I looked CoolEdit was around $50 -- pretty good bang for the buck. Not sure if their freeware program will allow you to save, but I can tell you that any of the three programs mentioned above can shift the pitch in very small increments (fractions of a cent, as I recall)

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2000 Fessenden S-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro

Colin Goss · Post by **Colin Goss** » 11 Dec 2002 1:18 am

Have a look at TRANSCRIBE

available at
http://www.seventhstring.demon.co.uk

This will do exactly what you want and is available for a 30 day evaluation period

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 11 Dec 2002 6:59 am

Thanks guys.

A trial load of Cool Edit was able to do this. Maybe I'd be better buying it instead of Roxio Easy CD Creator Platinum. I liked the canned nature of Roxio's package but maybe I'm more of a tinkerer than I was admitting when I selected it. I'd also need Cool Edit's Audio Cleanup plug-in to fully replace my use of Roxio.

Colin, I read the Transcriber information and was concerned that it said this:

Transcribe! is not an editor. It reads, plays and records audio files but does not modify them.

Will it enable me to shift the pitch up a few cents and save the file? (The sample given is of slowing down a select passage w/o changing the pitch.) ...Easy enough for me to just try the download; screen shot looks simple and more intuitive than Cool Edit.[This message was edited by Ron Page on 11 December 2002 at 07:01 AM.]

Tommy Mc · Post by **Tommy Mc** » 11 Dec 2002 8:28 am

Ron... Nero!
The wave editor that comes with Nero has time and pitch correction along with other effects and filters. The pitch adjustment has two controls, one for full semi-tones, the other for cents. You can preview and save the file like you want to do.
Cool Edit is a great program, but if you are trying out Roxio because of it's burning features, you might want to try Nero too.

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 11 Dec 2002 9:34 am

Tommy,

Thanks! I'l give Nero a look. That sounds like the same scheme the AudioHQ offers except, like I said, I can't get those effects to take to a file -- only the audio playback.

My Dell system came with the OEM basic version of Roxio (formerly Adaptec) and I upgraded to get the analog recording and sound cleaning and scratch/pop removal. Their editor has semitones for shift but not cents. I can roll back to the OEM package and retain the CD burning capabilities.

Cool Edit seems to offer a lot that I don't have, but I'm not sure I'd ever make use of it.

Ron

Larry Bell · Post by **Larry Bell** » 11 Dec 2002 12:05 pm

Adaptec/Roxio have traditionally done non-standard things to optimize how their software works. For example, there's a driver called CDRALVSD.vxd . Adaptec reverse engineered it and installed their version, overwriting the original. Applications that only work with the original version ceased to work. When my SCSI Jaz drive and my SmartCard reader for my camera stopped working, I traced it to that vxd and decided to uninstall (NOT an easy task -- their uninstall program only does some of the job). I rebooted, bought and installed Nero, and haven't had a problem since. I don't use their wave editor since I have SoundForge, but I'll have to check it out. The rest of the program is TOP NOTCH -- good German engineering.

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Larry Bell - email: larry@larrybell.org - gigs - Home Page
2000 Fessenden S-12 8x8, 1969 Emmons S-12 6x6, 1971 Dobro

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 12 Dec 2002 6:05 pm

Guys,

One question on Nero. I was experimenting with the Wave Editor and it seems to create some extraneous files. They have the same file name as my original WAV files but extensions of WPK or PK. They're also smaller than the WAV files. Do you know what they are?

BTW: The pitch transpose worked fine. I haven't gone much beyond that, but was experimenting a little with the burn program and Nero Express when I noticed the extra files.

Kenny Davis · Post by **Kenny Davis** » 12 Dec 2002 9:10 pm

Cool Edit creates a "peak" file that helps load, save, and redraw your audio files more quickly. You can delete them, but larger files would take a little longer to load.

Ron Page · Post by **Ron Page** » 13 Dec 2002 6:19 am

Thanks, Kenny.

I noticed after I posted that message that the PK files were created by Cool Edit, not Nero.

Roxio seems to handle large files quite well, and with transparency.

In the short time I fiddled around with the packages, I was able to get the cleanest sound with Cool Edit using the optional Audio Cleanup Plug-In.

Like all other tools, there are some slick features in each tool, but no one has them all.

Thanks again.

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HagFan