When you change the sample rate, you must also resample. Otherwise, all you are doing is playing fewer samples per second from the original file which creates the slowdown effect. I believe there is a checkbox for resampling in SoundForge.

it´s good to know there´s someone like you David. for my part I can only thank you a lot. you´ve really halped me a lot. thanks.

now that we´re at it: what do you think is best? applying all effects (e.g. reverb, eq...) first and then resampling and lowering the bit depth once that´s done? or vice versa? and would you do that to a single track or would you mix all tracks with effects and change the bits to the final song?

thanks again

FER

there's always artifacts when sampling down i guess, really depends on the algoritm used.. lots of mastering houses downsample not in software, but by using hiquality converters, and rerecord at 44.1 khz..
if recording for cd, might as well record right away at 44.1..
what do y'all think?
huub

I´m really interested in knowing that for the next time I record. Should I record in 24 bits but 44.1 right away???

Fer wrote: I´m really interested in knowing that for the next time I record. Should I record in 24 bits but 44.1 right away???

If you're target media is 44.1 AND you are doing all of the mixing and mastering yourself, THEN yes, record at 44.1.

Or you can record at 88.2 (not 96). Then the SRC calculation is simple and there are less artifacts. If you are mixing and mastering in the box, do it at the higher sample rate before SRC and dithering the bit depth.

Downsampling and bitrate reduction should always be the final step, left for the mastering engineer if applicable. The more information you give your effects processors to work with, especially in the form of bit depth, the better the results will be. I also think you should just use 44.1 from the beginning.