Does Repitching affect Audio Quality? / A=446 vs A=440

Hi everyone,

I'm getting started with Hauptwerk. Currently only using the free Friesach organ, but planning to buy a sample set soon. I will play french music, transcriptions, and some modern music together with other instruments (mostly guitar and singers).

I'm leaning towards Salisbury, but that organ is tuned to A=446 instead of concert pitch.

I can configure Hauptwerk to A=440, but then it will need to pitch-shift every note quite a bit.
Does that mean I lose audio quality? Is this effect noticable when shifting from 446 to 440?

I understand that Hauptwerk always does pitch-shifting - to add some random and wind-based detuning. But if I pick a A=446 sample set and play it at A=440, Hauptwerk would need to do more pitch-shifting than usual and I wonder how that affects quality.

Obviously, when playing with guitar and singers we can simply all tune to A=446. But there will be situations when I need A=440 and I'd like to know if I need to sacrifice audio quality for that.


Thanks,
Lukas

[mdyde]

Hello Lukas,

[Topic moved here.]

If you're using Hauptwerk v6 and have the 'high-definition pitch-shifting' audio engine preference ticked for the organ then Hauptwerk uses extremely high-quality pitch-shifting and there wouldn't any audible loss of audio quality (distortion) even with large pitch shifts (e.g. more than an octave). Hence provided that you have that preference ticked you don't need to worry about it.

Without that preference ticked (or in v5 or earlier, which didn't have that ability), larger pitch shifts would give some audible distortion. However the difference between 440 and 446 Hz is fairly small, so the distortion would be small anyway.

If your CPU is powerful enough, I'd always recommend keeping the 'high-definition pitch-shifting' preference ticked.

Yes I am using v6. So in effect, re-pitching is no problem and the original pitch of the sample set shouldn't be a factor in my considerations at all. All clear, thanks for your quick response.

[mdyde]

Thanks, Lukas. Correct. You're welcome.