Sample rate confusion....

Cubase
1

Hi folks,

I hope someone might be able to help…I have cubase LE and just bought a little preamp (Behringer MIC100) to give some more volume to mic’d acoustic guitars. So I am recording my acoustic (electric acoustic) guitar 2 ways together:

-with a mic first through the MIC100 preamp then into my Tascam US122L USB interface into my pc and
-from the guitar pickup directly into my Tascam US122L USB interface into my pc

So two tracks at once.

I am running into a problem sometimes which seems to be only in the files containing audio recorded with this preamp - I’m not 100% sure of this because sometimes projects I use this preamp with are o.k.

But anyway here’s the problem - I create a new project, and record a few tracks, everything sounds fine, in tune, and the audio is down (when I double click to open the audio editor) as 44.1kHz. Also when I go into my project setup, it is set to 44.1kHz. So the files are tagged as 44.1kHz.

But when I close and reopen the file the files are all out of tune with my guitars (which I have just tuned electronically - and just used to record these files) and my VST’s (which agree with the guitars). So it appears the files were actually recorded at 48kHz, and tagged at 44.1, as they are playing (playback is 44.1kHz) about a semitone below what they were recorded at.

Whats also weird is that the other day I was writing this post and I checked again to confirm that the files were playing slower, and they were actually playing at the right pitch! But my vst’s were out, so I’m thinking that it was all playing at 48kHz, making the 48kHz files sound o.k. and my VST’s sound out. I’ve tried about 10 times to repeat this but haven’t been able to.

I wonder if anyone knows if my setup is incorrect, or if a preamp could override the sample rate in cubase or cause such sample rate confusion/mislabelling? Or how I might prevent this from happening, kind of “fix” the sample rate - which I thought the settings in the project setup would do…

Also does anyone know of a pc based program that will retag audio sample rate?

Many Thanks,
Dave

2

Some audio interfaces don’t change sample rate automatically. Try setting your Tascam to 44.1 before you open Cubase.

3

Thanks for this. I have checked my Tascam and it is set to 44.1 as a default on the Tascam software, through which the sample rate cannot be changed. For this interface the sample rate is changed within the sequencing software, and that is also set at 44.1, which I’ve been checking, and until now has always been 44.1.

I tried setting the project as 48 kHz before starting a new recording session, and while that created 48 kHz files that were actually also tagged at 48 kHz, the audio playback after closing and opening the file in cubase was still about a semitone lower. But this time when I opened the files individually in Audacity etc, they identified as 48kHz, and played at the correct pitch. I will try to reimport them into another 48 KHz empty project and see how that goes, upon saving and reopening. Seems strange though, wonder if its caused by using pretty old software/hardware with brand new hardware - seems to be something to do with the pre-amp. I never had such troubles and have been using this setup for 7-8 years.

Cheers
Dave