High-quality playbacking in 432 Hz tuning

First of all, welcome to my blog.

Subject: Retuning music to A = 432 Hz.

Reasoning: Music in 432 Hz is considered by many music lovers to be more pleasant and harmonious for listening than music in 440 Hz. The effect can also be described as non-fatiguing. The standard tuning is blindly accepted by many musicians worldwide and therefor, most of music is being recorded and played in this tuning.

Understanding: Firstly, before the actual retuning, it is important to understand what it means at all when a music file is being retuned. Based on my hearing, it seems that the difference, even when being of 8 Hz, is big. Music in 440 Hz seems to be altered into a certain mood, possibly creating an unwanted pressure because of an increased dissonance, while 432 Hz seems natural and helps keeping a focus, therefor enjoying the music and therefor, being non-fatiguing. This is a personal feeling, of course, but I believe that this effect can be accurately examined if already wasn’t, and then, one could wonder who decided about 440 Hz as being the standard and why.

One of a documented usage of this tuning was during a time of Giuseppe Verdi, the composer of famous operas, such as Nabucco or Aida. As I have read, at some time, Verdi utilized the 432 Hz, which supposedly was easier for singers to sing at. However, it wasn't offically accepted as a standard, concert pitch.

It is known, that until the standardization composers were using various tunings. Even now, in some groups, the tuning is not set by the standard, but "by the ear". This is probably due to an instruments being built to sound better in a certain tuning and frequencies and most likely by a personal preference as well.

But let’s "talk“ about the retuning itself. It may be noted, that for instance, a magically sounding, handcrafted cymbal may not need to be retuned, but it is an essential part of a drum set, so the recording would have to be originally recorded in the desired tuning to preserve the character of its sound. Also, it is very probable, that retuning music after it has been recorded would mean, that frequencies created while playing in 432 Hz won’t be completely reconstructed, as well as the effect of the tuning on instruments. In terms of genuineness, the highest quality is preserved when playbacking is done with none or with a minimal bit change. And it is clear, that changing the pitch means changing the bits, respectively, the music information which they represent, and that it is a complex change. Still, there are ways to achieve astonishing quality and fidelity of an audio signal.

✎ Article update (16. 2. 2020; 2. 7. 2020, 4. 7. 2020):

Other undesired after-effects of retuning: There is one thing related to pitch shifting, which may cause issues, beside the artifacts. And it is when a song contains low frequency tones. So for example, in case of retuning from 440 Hz to 432 Hz, a tone with a frequency of 58 Hz would be lowered to 50 Hz, and frequencies around and below this point can be a cause for unwanted vibrations and become unpleasant in some way. Also, a too low and loud sounds can be harmful, so a filter might be needed. Further information will be provided in third article.

Realization: One way is to change the pitch by stretching an audio file. Although the conversion can be done without creating any noticeable artifacts, it changes the original dynamics and tempo. Another, and in my opinion, a more convenient way is to utilize a pitch shifting plugin. And thanks to a passion of people creating audio software and providing interesting solutions, such plugin can be used even along with a music player. And it is what I currently consider to be the best way of playbacking music in 432 Hz on PC. To realize that, you need 3 things, basically.

1) Foobar2000 music player created by Peter Pawlowski and contributing developers

Website: http://foobar2000.com

2) "George Yohng's VST Wrapper" component, version 1.2

Website: http://www.yohng.com/software/foobarvst.html

3) VST plugin creating minimum of artifacts, such as Elastique Pitch, but if possible, a

better one. (More information will be provided in 3rd article.)

Website: https://products.zplane.de/elastique-pitch-2

Notes: Conversion can also be done in the player. The quality is very good and it works even for 24-bit/192 kHz music files.

✎ Additional notes (19. 6. 2020; 6. 10. 2020): Music files with sampling rate faster than 48 000 Hz may contain frequencies above our hearing range. That may imply, that the frequencies don't have an effect, but in fact they do. And they can harm. It's an ultrasound. For safety reasons, I recommend 44.1 (CD quality) or 48 kHz sampling rate, unless such file is well analyzed and confirmed to be safe for listening.

Although the quality appears to be very good overall, there are problems with so called transients, so like the starts of tones or accents, even in the version 2.1.2. This can be noticeable on piano music, for instance. So instead of proper tone creation, there is an artifact, creating something like a glass-like effect, or a short echo.

While both the player and component are free softwares, Elastique Pitch costs 149 EUR, but it is possible, that you may find other pitch shifting plugin, which is priced less or even free of charge and doesn’t create any much of artifacts. There is also another component which allows to load VST plugins, but it is problematic in conjunction with this one. During each start of the player, a component’s menu will most likely pop-up. The issue is described on a page where you can download the component from, so I believe it can be fixed.

✎ Article update (16. 2. 2020, 16. 4. 2020, 15. 6. 2020):

Caution: Retuning with Elastique Pitch, or possibly the retuning itself might cause some clipping, so I suggest to set the input volume several dB lower. It can be done with an "Amplifier DSP" component made by a contributing developer Janne Hyvärinen. The steps are following:

1) Download the component from here: https://foobar.hyv.fi/?view=foo_dsp_amp

2) Start Foobar2000 if it's not already running.

3) Double click on the downloaded component. A window should appear.

4) Install it and restart the player as suggested.

5) Then navigate to Playback → DSP Manager, put the component above George Yohng's

VST Wrapper and set it to at least -5 dB, which should be enough. Confirm the

settings.

More information regarding this will be in the third article.

✎ Article update (19. 6. 2020)

After some time I noticed one problem when initiating a playback while using the VST Wrapper, except the pop-up issue, which doesn't seem to be getting fixed. The audio may sound like being interrupted for a short time in the beginning, but thankfully, there is another component preventing this from happening, and once again, it is made by Janne Hyvärinen, who's being the saviour here. It is called Pregap DSP. By the way, a similar function is already integrated into a MusicBee player.

Steps are similar to the installation of Amplifier DSP and most of other components.

1) Download the file from author's site here: https://foobar.hyv.fi/?view=foo_dsp_pregap

2) Start Foobar2000 if it isn't running already, naturally.

3) Double click on the component. A window should appear.

4) Install it, and restart the player as suggested.

5) View the DSP Manager and put the Pregap DSP from the list on the right side to the

left side - to the active ones, and at the top.

6) Then navigate to Tools → Pregap DSP, set it up as following:

...and confirm it.

Setting up the zplane’s Elastique Pitch VST plugin

For a complex change, set the pitch to -0.32 semitones (st). Timber will automatically change as well. If you want to preserve formants, so basically the character, leave timbre in the middle position when both sliders are unlinked. In my opinion, changing the timbre creates more artifacts, but it’s up to you to decide what you prefer. Freezing the input buffer may cause issues, so it should be rather unchecked.

A 432 Hz music player

There is also a 432 Hz music player, which is available for free on this page: https://www.facebook.com/pg/432Player/about/?ref=page_internal The download link is in the “About“ section. There is no need to set up any plugins, but it doesn’t have features the Foobar2000 is offering.

✎ Note (4. 7. 2020): It stayed hidden by the authors, but after testing it out more I found out, that this player uses a slowing-down method with high-pass filter for PC playback at the date I'm writing this. So it means that there are much less of artifacts, but dynamics and tempo are affected. The android version is offering both methods.

✎ Additional note (9. 7. 2020): The "current" latest android version has only 1 playbacking method now. More information will be provided in third article.

A similar effect can be achieved in Foobar2000 with newer "Effect DSP" released by "mudlord", or with an unupdated "SoundTouch" component by "Acropolis". Both are based on a similarly named "library", made by Olli Parviainen. However, please take into consideration, that to make it safe for listening, a high-pass filter needs to be used as well. Tempo-preserving method of pitch shifting with this component should be completely avoided, due to amount of annoying artifacts it still creates.

If you need an assistance, contact me on this e-mail: lh.e-mail@yandex.com.

Thanks for reading,

Lubomír

Article update (2. 7. 2020) - Removal of short text about plugin stability.

Article update (6. 10. 2020) - Change of text from suggested zplane's plugin to unspecified plugin, due to persisting problem in transients.

All content on this page is copyrighted. This article I wrote mainly as a suggestion on how to play music in 432 Hz tuning. I’m not involved in any advertising. If you would like to read more articles about PC audio or about audio in general and you want to support me, you can do so by various ways, also by donating, though it isn't required, it's voluntary. Thank you.