A friend sent you a drum loop
and a guide vocal.
You dragged them into your session
and pressed play.
Something was off.
The drums sat slightly ahead of your grid,
then further ahead,
then a whole beat early
within a few bars.
The vocal sounded
like the singer had breathed helium,
just a little.
You tried to sing a harmony
and could not find the key.
Nothing was wrong
with the files.
They were recorded
at 44.1 kilohertz,
forty four thousand one hundred
snapshots of the sound
every second.
Your session ran at 48.
Your software,
set up that way by somebody once,
did not convert them
on the way in.
It simply played
forty eight thousand snapshots a second
of a recording
made at forty four thousand one hundred.
That is about nine percent faster.
And higher by nearly a semitone and a half,
which is the worst amount,
too far to be close
and not far enough
to be a different key.
The opposite mistake
makes everything slow and flat,
which is worse,
because it sounds almost plausible,
like a sleepy take.
Digital audio is a list of numbers
with a speed written on the side.
If two people
disagree about the speed,
nobody gets an error.
The music just changes.
No meter goes red.
No box pops up.
The song is simply
a little faster and a little higher
than the one your friend played.
So decide the rate
before the first note.
Write it in the project name,
in every file you bounce,
in every message
that sends stems.
Turn on conversion when importing,
and check it is still on
after every update.
When a file comes in,
look at its properties
before you trust your ears.
And keep a reference.
A click at a known tempo,
bounced at the session rate,
imported now and then
into a fresh project.
If it drifts off the grid,
something in the chain
is guessing.
Numbers are only music
when everyone agrees
how fast to read them.
– Serguey Asael Shinder
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