Burning songs w/pitch shifting intact

[MikeHL]

Hi, people. After fooling around with the trial version of kJams Lite for a while, I registered it earlier today and also bought the burner plugin. I have to say, so far, I'm impressed with their reliability and functionality -- much better than similar Windozzzzzze products I've used. No shock there, right? I already have a Plextor PX-S88TU drive on hand, so I'm good to go.

Except for one thing. The wiki page about the burner plugin says this about it --

"Allows kJams Lite or Pro to burn new CD+G discs from a playlist.
Burns the song with your pitch bending (shifting) intact (so when you play it on real hardware, it comes out pitch bent, without instructing the playback device to do anything special)"

I just tried it out with some songs I ripped from a couple of DKKaraoke discs I have. (While I find the DK stuff that I have to be perfectly serviceable, the songs they recorded in more "manageable" keys annoy me and I'm trying to correct them.) They ripped without a hitch. Shifting the ripped songs into the keys I prefer isn't a problem. Dropping the pitch-shifted songs into a playlist and burning them, again, no problem. However, the pitch shifting got lost during the burn.

Have any of you had success in keeping pitch shifts intact during a burn, and if so, am I not doing something that I should? My Mac runs 10.4.11, if that helps. Thanks for any pointers you can come up with!

-- Mike

[dave]

this is the first i've heard of this issue. You're doing it right: you make a playlist, set the pitches, and just burn, that's it. I'll give this a test on tuesday night.

-dave

[MikeHL]

Thanks again in advance for having a go of it. As I mentioned, great product! I'm really liking it a lot. One other thing worth noting: I tried pitch-bends of songs from some other brands I have and they seem to burn OK, with the pitch bends intact. It seems to be only DK discs that won't do this. Even those will go into the image file with the bends still noted -- the image file will note "importing (track #, song title), (Pitch bend: +/- whatever)" -- but once the burn is done with DK songs the bend is gone. Not sure if that will help, but it might, so you should know about it.

-- Mike

[dave]

I have to say what you're describing is impossible, literally. I can only presume there's some error in your information somewhere. It simply is not possible that it only affects certain publishers' songs. please send me a song that seems to refuse to burn bent. send both audio and CDG.

[MikeHL]

Email sent. I also included a song that WILL burn bent for comparison's sake.

[dave]

I tried burning with both songs bent and both came out fine.
how sure are you that the song is not pitch bent on the disc you burned? that it was set to bend in the playlist? etc? did you use Apple Audio Unit pitch bending?

[MikeHL]

Sorry about not replying last night. Posting in this thread was the last thing I did before going to bed. Damned 60-hour weeks...<grumble>

Anyway, I'm 100% sure the DK songs I have are not pitch-bent after I burn them. I have burned 3 or 4 copies of them to be sure. They also will not bend regardless of which direction I try bending in, up in pitch or down. I'm also 100% sure I have them set to bend in the playlist. I'm looking at it right now , and when the image file is forming, each track will show up in the Tasks window as being bent. However, none of them will actually come out that way.

As for Apple Audio Unit, I have absolutely no idea what that is. Never heard of it until now. If you suggest activating or adjusting it, that's probably the issue. Now to try finding it...

-- Mike

[dave]

the Apple AU gives *pristine* quality pitch bending, otherwise you may get some warble.

if you are available tomorrow night, i can look at your machine.

-dave

[MikeHL]

Problem solved.

Just for laughs, I decided to try playing the 2 most recent copies of that song (and others I was trying to bend) in iTunes. Lo and behold, they WERE bent when played there, to my surprise. I then opened up kJams again and the discs are now playing in there with their respective bends, too. (Until now, the tracks were playing straight from the kJams Library or on the playlists with the bends, but CD playback didn't have them.) I don't know why kJams would not play back the CDs with the bends until now, but it wouldn't.

Thanks for looking into this, and I look forward to fixing all those '80s synth-pop/New Wave songs that DK produced very good arrangements for, but in a more "manageable" pitch for most singers. Anything in an upper male register was done like that (Earth, Wind and Fire and Bee Gees records come to mind right away), and I have an upper-ish male register, so it's a pain in the ass.

-- Mike

[dave]

HAHAHAHA! i get it now

when you "played off the CD" you really played from the cache. the cache is not pitch bent. i thought from your detailed bug-seeking analysis that you had brought the disc to a real karaoke hardware player and played them there. I didn't realize you played them inside kJams just after burning. when you do that they don't play off the CD they play from the cache, which is not bent.

to REALLY test it playing off the CD, you have to clear your cache. problem solved.

[MikeHL]

LOL. Sorry to puzzle ya like that. What can I say? I'm special. I completely forgot about the cache. No, I wanted to at least give this a shot before I play this on anything sophisticated...and I almost deep-sixed that. Duhhhh.

-- Mike

[dave]