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Gear / Technical Help => Post-Processing, Computer / Streaming / Internet Devices & Related Activity => Topic started by: BlingFree on July 29, 2015, 02:00:11 AM
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Getting ready to transfer, track n FLAC a bunch of mono SBD DATs.
Is it proper etiquette to track and FLAC a mono file OR convert to "stereo" by duplicating the same wave to left and right channels?
Thank you.
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Getting ready to transfer, track n FLAC a bunch of mono SBD DATs.
Is it proper etiquette to track and FLAC a mono file OR convert to "stereo" by duplicating the same wave to left and right channels?
Thank you.
By "mono" you mean you have a stereo file with only 1 channel...?
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it was a mono SBD feed and the deck was set to record mono and the wave file is one channel.
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On playback, if it comes out of both speakers...ok, as-is...IMO
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I don't see a problem with a mono file especially if that's how it was recorded.
If you want to get all fancy you could dupe it to a stereo file, hard pan it L & R and add a millisecond of delay to one of the channels or use an stereo expander plugin to get fake stereo....
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I don't see a problem with a mono file especially if that's how it was recorded.
If you want to get all fancy you could dupe it to a stereo file, hard pan it L & R and add a millisecond of delay to one of the channels or use an stereo expander plugin to get fake stereo....
If the signal is the same I'd see no reason to pan it L/R...
I don't recommend adding delay and would be careful about plug-ins.
You could eq or otherwise process it a bit to give some different character to each of the resulting channels if there's something to be gained by that but IMO a mono source is fine.
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The initial question is not whether or not to process it to produce "pseudo-stereo", but rather if it should be posted as a single-channel monophonic file-set or as a two-channel interleaved monophonic file-set. Duplicating the single monophonic channel to form a two-channel interleaved stereo file does not make it stereo, but two-channel mono. If doing something different to each side (eq, delay, reverb or whatever), that will make it a form of pseudo-stereo.
I'd say it depends on where and in what form you are posting it-
If posting FLACs, I'd say post it as a single-channel file-set. The original is a single channel WAV, and doubling the channel count with identical information needlessly increases the size of the file-set.
I might make it two-channel mono if posting lossy compresses files. That may be easier to playback on some systems/devices without the sound only playing back from the left channel. Not all will do that of course, many will recognize a mono file and play it from both the left & right channels, but some will, or used to at least. I'm not sure how prevalent that behavior still is.
Disclaimer- I'm no posting authority in any way shape or form.. others around here are more astute in that area can make the socially appropriate call.
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I appreciate the input, guys! First time I've had the honor of doing this and I just want to make sure I'm meeting the standard whatever that may be. :D
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I'd say it depends on where and in what form you are posting it-
If posting FLACs, I'd say post it as a single-channel file-set. The original is a single channel WAV, and doubling the channel count with identical information needlessly increases the size of the file-set.
Actually FLAC does not use space in that way.
If the channels are identical, when compressing to flac, flac is smart enough to know it only needs the data from one channel. So an identical two channel recording compresses to roughly half the size of a recording with two independent channels.
You can try it by compressing the one channel mono wav and the same wav as two mono channels. For all intents and purposes the flac compressed files will be the same size either way.
If that's the consideration there is nothing to influence you one way or the other regarding flac formatting or circulating as such.
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I'd say it depends on where and in what form you are posting it-
If posting FLACs, I'd say post it as a single-channel file-set. The original is a single channel WAV, and doubling the channel count with identical information needlessly increases the size of the file-set.
Actually FLAC does not use space in that way.
If the channels are identical, when compressing to flac, flac is smart enough to know it only needs the data from one channel. So an identical two channel recording compresses to roughly half the size of a recording with two independent channels.
You can try it by compressing the one channel mono wav and the same wav as two mono channels. For all intents and purposes the flac compressed files will be the same size either way.
If that's the consideration there is nothing to influence you one way or the other regarding flac formatting or circulating as such.
Understood.. which is why I worded my statement the way I did. I was unsure of how efficient the FLAC codec is in coding two identical channels, and although a two channel FLAC will never be double the size of a same length single channel FLAC of the same content like a WAV file would be (unless the two channels were completely uncorrelated with each other), the FLAC size will increase by some amount. I was unsure of how much, however, and your testing confirms that it is essentially negligible. Probably only by a few bits indicating the information is identical between channels. Thanks for clarifying that.
Similarly, it is always interesting to me to compare the achieved FLAC compression ratios between my multiple-channel file sets of the same recorded event. I leave the FLAC compression level at the default (6), so correlation between the two channels is the primary determinant of the actually achieved compression ratio. Wide spaced omnis with the least correlation between channels always compress by the least amount, and front/back facing pairs compress less than forward facing near-spaced pairs and SBDs.
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Abnormally small flac fileset sizes is a dead giveaway for an un-advertised mono recording, fwiw.
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Split to 2 mono tracks and list that in the notes. No one wants to listen to music come out of one speaker.
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Split to 2 mono tracks and list that in the notes. No one wants to listen to music come out of one speaker.
There are a whole bunch of us out there with totally dedicated mono systems.
Meet Audrey.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v729/MokePics2/Presto%2015G2%201953%20Idler%20Turntable/ink-spots_mono-rig_zpsa93ba539.jpg)
1932 Art-Deco phonograph case
1952 Presto Recording Corp 15G2 broadcast turntable
GE A1-500 broadcast tonearm from early 50's
Mid-50's Harman-Kardon Prelude PC200 integrated mono tube amplifier, with mono line-in
GE A1-401 coaxial corner speaker, early fifties hi-fi speakers (a pair, but only one hooked up)
Thousands of late forty and early fifties mono records (33.3rpm LP's) and thousands of 78's.
Some of us that love music of all eras are well equipped to handle a single mono file, properly.
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& on the modern side, I think there is currently something of a defacto mono listening resurgence going on, simply from people so commonly playing music out of one tiny portable speaker.
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it was a mono SBD feed and the deck was set to record mono and the wave file is one channel.
I would copy it over to the other channel if it was me.
I actually have a recording from a radio show where the talking is stereo, ie r/l but the music is mono
It is the most annoying thing and I wish I had made the music "stereo"
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Since we're on the topic of "mono" recordings I have a somewhat related and hopefully not too far off topic (or dumb) question for the experts here.
So I recently (and for the third time in the last year) made a three-channel live recording using a set of mics in the room and a single mono sbd feed via XLR connection on the back of a powered speaker.
I use Audacity for post processing and this time instead of copying the left channel to the right channel (or vice versa) for the soundboard feed and then doing my matrix mixing with the L/R aud channels, I made that mono soundboard feed into a one channel file, using Audacity. (I hope this makes sense so far).
My question then is, will having a "pure" mono mixed with the L/R aud channels sound any different then using L/R mono channels instead like I'd done previously?
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No difference between a monophonic signal used as one channel, panned to the center when routed to a stereo output bus, and the same signal copied to two separate channels (assuming identical level, EQ, etc. on both channels), routed directly to the left and right stereo output bus.
Just different working methods of achieving the same thing. If it doesn't sound identical something else is going on.
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No difference between a monophonic signal used as one channel, panned to the center when routed to a stereo output bus, and the same signal copied to two separate channels (assuming identical level, EQ, etc. on both channels), routed directly to the left and right stereo output bus.
Just different working methods of achieving the same thing. If it doesn't sound identical something else is going on.
That's pretty much what I thought, thanks for the confirmation!
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Yep, make it mono in Audacity and mix it with your stereo mics.
Matrix GOLD.....
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I'd say it depends on where and in what form you are posting it-
If posting FLACs, I'd say post it as a single-channel file-set. The original is a single channel WAV, and doubling the channel count with identical information needlessly increases the size of the file-set.
Actually FLAC does not use space in that way.
If the channels are identical, when compressing to flac, flac is smart enough to know it only needs the data from one channel. So an identical two channel recording compresses to roughly half the size of a recording with two independent channels.
You can try it by compressing the one channel mono wav and the same wav as two mono channels. For all intents and purposes the flac compressed files will be the same size either way.
If that's the consideration there is nothing to influence you one way or the other regarding flac formatting or circulating as such.
EXCELLENT INFO!
Abnormally small flac fileset sizes is a dead giveaway for an un-advertised mono recording, fwiw.
A brilliant tip!
I don't recall where, but I have had compatibility problems when I have tried using mono FLAC files, so I would suggest duplicating the channel into left & right before encoding to FLAC.
My issue could have been attempting to upload a mono file to the live music archive... I know I have had it come up and decided that dual-mono was the easiest solution.