Using Audacity to get 'two-track Mono'

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Using Audacity to get 'two-track Mono'

Postby Hugh-AR » 25 Jun 2017 14:39

When you have recorded a piece of music, you may discover that part of the stereo track may be missing. This would probably be caused by a faulty connection. It is possible to ‘fill’ that empty space from the other channel, thereby creating a section of ‘two-track Mono’. Although not as ‘full’ sounding as Stereo, it is better to at least have the sound coming out of both speakers. You can do this in Audacity.

1. Run AUDACITY.

2. Click File, Open... Find your MP3 file, and click Open again. The file will now show in Audacity as a stereo ‘waveform’, left channel on the top, and right channel below it.
The below is the waveform of Ray’s Days Of Wine And Roses:

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3. Click with the mouse just before the ‘missing’ waveform section and a line will run from bottom to top. Highlight the section from there to the end of the piece by holding down the Shift key and pressing End (Shift + End). This is what you will see:

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4. Copy the highlighted section (Ctrl + C). This will 'copy' the section to the 'clipboard' and store it there until we want to 'paste' it.

5. Click on Tracks (at the top).

6. Click on Add New, then Stereo Track. Two new blank tracks will appear underneath the first two.

7. Do a Paste (Ctrl + V). The highlighted bit will show in the bottom two tracks, with the wave form still showing as the left channel.

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8. If you look on the left of the bottom two waveform tracks you will see the words Audio Track at the top. Click on the ‘down arrow’ by that. Click on Swap Stereo Channels. This is what you will see .. the left channel at the bottom moved down to the right channel (the top waveforms remain as they were).

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9. We now want to Save the whole lot as MP3. So click on File at the top, choose Export Audio... , at which point you will be warned that your tracks will be mixed down to two stereo channels in the exported file (which is what we want it to do). You can opt to Don’t show this warning again. Any subsequent additions of more channels would then automatically revert to two channels when Saved. Click OK etc. to Save the MP3 in a folder of your choice.
This is what the final waveform looks like. In Stereo up to the point where the left channel was put into the right channel, and in two-track Mono from there on. Compare this waveform with the one we started with, at the top.

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Click this LINK to hear how Ray’s track has ended up after carrying out this process.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5332#p35990

Hugh
It's all about the music ♫ ♪ ♫ Organ: Yamaha AR80 & Keyboard: Tyros 4
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