Pitch Shift Sound Quality

Whats yalls opinion on how much to pitch in semitones to keep the best sound quality?

1. What range of semitones do you stay in for samples to sound the best?
2.In general do you find things sound better when you pitch shift and let the Tempo to change with it vs pitch shifting and time stretching to try and maintain the tempo?

IMO this depends highly on the material.
For example:
some samples sound stupid when pitched down too much others sound even better (or get a specal vibe) than at original pitch.
I never liked high pitched voice samples cause that sounded very stupid in my ears. Other people love that.
A snare pitched down a whole octave often sound too low for a snare. A horn sample can benefit from such a low pitch.

peace

What about organ and electric guitars?

skiroy wrote:What about organ and electric guitars?

Definitely good to pitch down.

It also depends on the sampler you are using (and the sample itself, as peterpiper mentioned).

The Akai S950 has by far the best pitch (IMHO). MPC60 is pretty lackluster for pitching sounds. Newer MPCs are not to bad.