Stretch and change rate indipendently?

[Phazma]

For sounddesign purpouses I often want for example to pitch an item up or down by altering the playrate and stretch it to change it's texture. Or the other way round. However Reaper treats stretching and adjusting the rate like the same process with the only difference being that preserving pitch is either switched on (stretch) or off (rate). So is it in some way possible to asjust these things indipendently without having to glue the item (and so avoid forcing me to undo and redo many times until I like the sound and create many unneccessary files)?

[foxAsteria]

You can preserve pitch when changing rate or not. Set it per item in properties or per project by right clicking transport.

[domzy]

in item properties pitch & rate are different boxes - you don't need to glue to adjust them separately

[Phazma]

Thanks, but I know that pitch and rate aren't tied together. What I want to do is pitch it by reducing or increasing the rate instead of pitching it with an algorithm. I use the actions 'Increase(/Decrease) item rate by one semitone, preserving length, clear preserve pitch' for this and after that I want to use my mouse+modifier to stretch the item. But when I stretch the item, the rate gets reduced and the pitch is even lower, instead of making the item sounding "grainy" at the pitch which I set before. And if I tick the box 'Preserve pitch when chaning rate' to be able to actually stretch the item with an algorithm, the playrate resets.
So if I want to pitch the item by chaning the rate and afterwards stretch the item at the altered rate I have to glue it before doing so. It would be nice if there was a way in Reaper to handle algorithmic time stretch and stretch-by-playrate indipendently to be able to stretch the item partially by lowering the rate and partially by altering the waveform.

[foxAsteria]

1. Turn off pitch linked to rate in the project.
2. Stretch items.
3. Apply take pitch envelopes to items and pitch to taste.

I don't think it matters which way you adjust pitch, because they use the same algorithm, which can be set per item or project. Might be wrong. The different algorithms sound different depending on the source.

[Phazma]

Originally Posted by foxAsteria

1. Turn off pitch linked to rate in the project.
2. Stretch items.
3. Apply take pitch envelopes to items and pitch to taste.

I don't think it matters which way you adjust pitch, because they use the same algorithm, which can be set per item or project. Might be wrong. The different algorithms sound different depending on the source.

That is also a nice way to mangle items and useful in some cases but it sounds different than pitching with playrate. The playrate actually just plays the same waveform slower so there is no algorithm involved and there are no artifacts but the whole frequency spectrum shifts down resulting in a more "closed" sounding version of the same sound. The pitch envelope on the other hand to keep the original timing intact is forced in some way to apply an algorithm that messes with the waveform - hence why it has an other sound.
Here you can see the difference with the original sound pitched by -6 semitones, first by lowering the playrate and second by lowering the pitch envelope:



The playrate one is the same waveform like the original but spread out over a longer time and the pitch envelope one is a different waveform.

[Eddy]

Izotope RX has this facility using "a resampling mode". Not sure what other editors have it, but I have not found a way to do it to items in Reaper

[Phazma]

Originally Posted by Eddy

Izotope RX has this facility using "a resampling mode". Not sure what other editors have it, but I have not found a way to do it to items in Reaper

If I have to do it destructively with an audio editor I think I better of just glueing. Probably the best is finding a way to do it with rendering takes, but it does not work as I want out of the box so probably I need to try around a bit.
Another cool thing I found is a script in progress in one of the FR threads that glues non-destructivly (like some kind of toggle), though it seems to only work when selecting a minimum of 2 items, can't yet be used like glue to "solidify" a single item.