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Why does changing the sampling or playback rate of a sound changes its pitch?

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  • @downvoter Why?
    – Caesar
    Dec 8, 2012 at 2:03
  • Have you ever run an album at a faster speed?
    – JoshP
    Dec 8, 2012 at 21:30
  • @Josh Yes, but that is kind of like saying if you jump off a building you will then understand gravity.
    – Caesar
    Dec 9, 2012 at 11:55

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Sample rate or playback rate is just the speed at which your software or hardware reads through the audio buffer and plays back what it finds. Just adjusting the sample rate speeds up or slows down the rate at which the waveform is read, which effectively shortens or lengthens the waveform contained within.

Consider a 440 Hz Sine wave. If you play that sine wave at half speed, you are playing a 220 Hz sine wave, which results in a tone an octave lower than your original sound.

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