Topic: fixing a channel drop out

[Drifter1]

A few weeks ago I was taping with my Dat....I went to listen back to my recording tonight and found  one channel dropped out due to the jack or the mic plug being loose...anyhow its only during one track and is partial and contained to the middle of the track.
 It would be easy to dump the one channel completely and then copy the other over to make a fake stereo track but I'f like to preserve the stereo image from the beginning and end of the track if possible.I'm thinking there must me away to ''copy'' a piece of the  mono track over to the ''missing'' track and edit it in seamlessly somehow.
 I use the Magix cleaning lab for my post work but would try other software if someone could ''show me the way''
Anyhow thanks for taking a moment to read this post

[BradM]

What I've done is use CDWav to chop the track into three sections:

#1: the start of the track until just before (i.e., a few seconds, at most) the offending section
#2: the end of section #1 until just after (i.e., a few seconds, at most) the offending section
#3: the end of section #2 until the end of the track.

I then take section #2 and do a complete channel-over-channel copy (using Audacity), making it monophonic. After this, I use WavMerge to put it between the untouched sections #1 and #3, making one big track, with the middle part of it now being monophonic.

Aloha,
Brad

[Drifter1]

thanks for the input brad....makes sense at first glance...hope I can wrap my head around it while attempting it..
thanks for typing that out for my consumption...Merry christmas!
Vince
Toronto Canada

[BradM]

You're very welcome. And if you're in Toronto, is there any chance you could record Burt Neilson Band (live BNB recordings can be found here) at The Horseshoe Tavern tomorrow night (Dec. 30)? I think they practiced for 12 hours yesterday, so the show should be bombular.

Aloha,
Brad

[Brian Skalinder]

A long-ish crossfade (5-15 sec) will make for a relatively seamless transition between the stereo and mono portions.

[Drifter1]

thanks again and for your input to Brian...unfortunately I will not be able top make the Horseshoe gig ///really sorry about that

[anonymous_user]

Just for the record, mostly all software has a built-in function to do this kind of thing automatically. Sometimes it might be called Channel Mixer or something similar. Finding it could be easy or hard, but it's in there, somewhere. I would have posted this right away when there were still 0 replies, but I was busy at the time and I was positive others would come along and mention it.

Basically you would highlight only the small portion in question, select the channel mixer option, and choose either both channels set to left channel or both channels set to right channel. Then maybe check the crossfade option to add in a small crossfade before and/or after what's highlighted and you're set. Then it simply replaces the small segment with the problem and there's no need to split up tracks or manually copy something yourself. Takes a couple seconds total. Hope that helps.

[Drifter1]

Just for the record, mostly all software has a built-in function to do this kind of thing automatically. Sometimes it might be called Channel Mixer or something similar. Finding it could be easy or hard, but it's in there, somewhere. I would have posted this right away when there were still 0 replies, but I was busy at the time and I was positive others would come along and mention it.

Basically you would highlight only the small portion in question, select the channel mixer option, and choose either both channels set to left channel or both channels set to right channel. Then maybe check the crossfade option to add in a small crossfade before and/or after what's highlighted and you're set. Then it simply replaces the small segment with the problem and there's no need to split up tracks or manually copy something yourself. Takes a couple seconds total. Hope that helps.

thanks for this...I'll definitely have another look at the Magix audio lab software I use

[Drifter1]

this morning I installed the Cool edit pro 2.0 and located the channel mixer...your instructions dealing with this were spot on....two thumbs way up!

[dorrcoq]

What I've done is use CDWav to chop the track into three sections:

#1: the start of the track until just before (i.e., a few seconds, at most) the offending section
#2: the end of section #1 until just after (i.e., a few seconds, at most) the offending section
#3: the end of section #2 until the end of the track.

I then take section #2 and do a complete channel-over-channel copy (using Audacity), making it monophonic. After this, I use WavMerge to put it between the untouched sections #1 and #3, making one big track, with the middle part of it now being monophonic.

Aloha,
Brad

Or, to my mind much simpler - split the stereo track in Audacity, delete the dropout from the bad track, move your marker to ther same spot on the other track, copy the section you want, and then paste it back in to the first track

[page]

Or, to my mind much simpler - split the stereo track in Audacity, delete the dropout from the bad track, move your marker to ther same spot on the other track, copy the section you want, and then paste it back in to the first track

I agree, but I'd overlap so you can do the fade transition.

A has full
B has drop out
C is blank track (new)

copy the drop out length of B plus 5-6 seconds on either side out of A, put in C. Apply a fade in and out that ends/begins where the drop out is. Do the same in B. Now when you do your mix-render, it will create a transition that doesn't have a level spike or a hard transition. A picture would probably help here. 

[admkrk]

Or, to my mind much simpler - split the stereo track in Audacity, delete the dropout from the bad track, move your marker to ther same spot on the other track, copy the section you want, and then paste it back in to the first track

I agree, but I'd overlap so you can do the fade transition.

A has full
B has drop out
C is blank track (new)

copy the drop out length of B plus 5-6 seconds on either side out of A, put in C. Apply a fade in and out that ends/begins where the drop out is. Do the same in B. Now when you do your mix-render, it will create a transition that doesn't have a level spike or a hard transition. A picture would probably help here. 

you mean something like this?



that's a matrix were i had drops in one of the sources but same principal.

[page]

Or, to my mind much simpler - split the stereo track in Audacity, delete the dropout from the bad track, move your marker to ther same spot on the other track, copy the section you want, and then paste it back in to the first track

I agree, but I'd overlap so you can do the fade transition.

A has full
B has drop out
C is blank track (new)

copy the drop out length of B plus 5-6 seconds on either side out of A, put in C. Apply a fade in and out that ends/begins where the drop out is. Do the same in B. Now when you do your mix-render, it will create a transition that doesn't have a level spike or a hard transition. A picture would probably help here. 

you mean something like this?

that's a matrix were i had drops in one of the sources but same principal.

yes, then just do the fades on the source with holes during the overlap, and mix/render tracks B and C together.

[Drifter1]

nice to see this thread helped another member or two...thanks for everyone who put in some input...