Slow down a soundbite

[dix]

... which falls into the category of restoration. Again, if MOTU is going to add useful restoration plugs, noise reduction would be my first choice, followed by the fart plug. (Why does that sound so useful as a "plug?)

Vari-speed a restoration tool? Peripherally maybe, but it also has enormous creative applications (as previously hashed nearly to death here: http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... vari+speed) that could have a big impact on how we work if we want it to. Few would trade the benefits of DAWs for this one tool, but Beatles-era George Martin, among many others, might argue that vari-speed is/was very much an essential part of their process. The problem is it's been off the table so long many people, apparently, don't realize or don't appreciate the potential imho.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Point being (or is that bean?) vari-speed is far from what most would call "essential."

Stinks, I know.

For anyone who is engaged in sound design, it is absolutely essential.

Really? I've been designing sound for over 40 years (started early ) and have never needed vari-speed. Adjust the speed of a cue or sound(bite) certainly, but variable, never.

[Shooshie]

Definition:

• Var' • i • speed
  n, 1. music, musicians: the controller inside a musician's skull that can make him/her sound like a genius one moment, or complete moron the next. ex. Shooshie set his varispeed for 0 and began editing the "DP Tips Sheet."
  
  v. 2. speeding up or slowing down one's mental abilities without changing the pitch of the IQ. ex. The plans for the heroic rescue had been advancing quickly until a major aftershock caused Marilyn's bikini top to rip loose and launch across the room, varispeeding the engineers' progress to zero until someone thought of the bucket of ice water, which brought them at least back to a workable pace.

Hey, everyone else seemed to have a definition for it. I figured "why not me?" Sadly, the answer to that question is all-too-evident now.

Shooshie

[stephentayler]

Regardless of whether such a process can (or should) be achieved within DP, here are a couple of instances of where I find variable speed to be useful:

I have a small silly superstitious tradition.... on all the albums I have mixed there has been a small moment of tape-phasing. This was usually done by playing two tapes together and varying the speed of one of them. (I actualy discovered this for myself playing with tape machines as a teenager before I learnt about how the professionals did it).

When things moved to digital, I discovered that by taking a sound region, duplicating it and then applying a tiny amount of speed change to one of them, that it would produce the classic phase sweep. Nudging the relative start time would place the peak of the sweep in a different spot. I do a bounce of the mix (or elements of it), tweak the speed (usually in ProTools) and then put it back in the mix, then move it around until I get the result I want. The amount of the speed change determines the speed of the sweep. Perfect pseudo tape phasing..... and not half as complicated as the original tape methods, believe me!

Also, a number of years ago, a friend handed me some original black and white 16 mm footage (digitised) of the very first performance by Blind Faith in Hyde Park, London, 1969. He also handed me a quarter inch tape of the performance that had been recorded onto a Nagra with a single microphone. There was no sync, but they had thoughtfully filmed a ‘mic tap’ for each film reel. Having digitised the audio, the speed of the tape was way off, and without having the original kit available, I tried varying the audio speed in Final Cut Pro until it matched up. It took a bit of trial and error, but eventually worked perfectly.

Anyway, I have lots of options for these processes, so I don't require it in DP.

Warmest best wishes

Stephen