The characteristics (sampling rate and bit depth) of a sound can be changed by choosing Characteristics in the Sound menu. If the [don’t resample] checkbox in that dialog is checked, the current sound will simply be played back at a different speed, without changing the actual sound samples.
For example, if you change the sampling rate from 44:1kHz to 22:05kHz and have [don’t resample] checked, the sound will be played back at half speed (so its pitch will also be lowered by one octave). If the [don’t resample] option is left unchecked, then half of the sound samples will be thrown away, so that playing back the sound at half speed results in something sounding roughly identical (except for a loss in the high frequencies) to the original.
