In prior versions of Audacity, when you selected to export to MP3, there was a “Channel Mode” option where you could select mono, stereo, or joint stereo (see bottom of first picture below). However, in Audacity 3.4.2, I no longer see any way to specify joint stereo. Stranger, the online manual still says that this is an option, “Encoding speed can be specified, and Joint Stereo encoding chosen as an option.” (see first paragraph at MP3 Export Options - Audacity Manual), so I wonder if it has been removed in error?
Is this by design or a bug? Is there a way to force Audacity to export in Joint Stereo? Or will I now have to do a further conversion using a third party tool like SoX or maybe LAME (ffmpeg doesn’t export properly to Joint Stereo)?
Old MP3 Export Window (note the option for Joint stereo at the bottom):
Maybe I found an answer to my question shortly after posting. I found these articles on third-party sites that Audacity now ONLY exports to joint stereo. Some quick export testing I just did appears to support this.
However, I don’t see this on any of the Audacity pages and the manual specifically states that it’s an option. So is the manual correct or are these sites correct:
Thanks for showing where the Audacity team has formally stated this. However, I would point out that it is in fact still wrong on the Audacity online manual as shown in my original post (see MP3 Export Options - Audacity Manual). How do we ensure the Audacity team fixes this in the documentation?
By the way, I do agree with the point at the link you’ve provided that Joint Stereo is generally better for quality, but I’d also add that it’s important for compatibility with older MP3 players (granted, those are rare these days and becoming rarer every day). Some of them ONLY support Joint Stereo and report L/R stereo MP3 files as incompatible.
I won’t get into the debate “Is joint stereo better or not than stereo”
Opinions are very divided and very different on this subject, and I do not have the competence to choose.
But recently I wanted to move from version 2.4.2 of Audacity to a more recent one, in this case the latest version 3.4.2
And I then noticed that although I chose a different mode than “Joint-stereo” during encoding, it was still a “joint-stereo” file that I obtained…
Using to verify this the famous Mp3tag (v3.2.3), which also confirmed that in “joint-stereo” the same musical file was smaller in size than in “simple” stereo…
And I also noticed that this anomaly was true from version v.3.4.0 of audacity… (no problem with version 3.3.3)
Also, and in my mind, you have every right to favor the method of producing Mp3s that seems the best to you; but on the other hand it is abnormal that you do not respect the user’s choice, by not taking their wishes into account.
Please keep in mind that the user may have “good reasons” to remain on this choice, mainly “will my different mp3 players” accept this new coding mode…
So I dare to hope that this is just a bug, and not a desire on your part.
Thank you in any case for this fantastic tool that is Audacity.
Greetings
Claude
Muse are unlikely to change their mind about this is my understanding.
Your option basically is to use 2.4.2 (or any version up to and including 3.3.3) if you want to be able to access the genuine pure “stereo” option in MP3 export. In fact I did exactly the same last week for a friend of mine who needed proper stereo MP3 files of a broadcast they had made on BBC Radio3.
You can have multiple versions of Audacity on your computer, they just need to be in differently named folders. But you can only run on e version at a time.
You can export as WAV or FLAC and then use a 3rd-party MP3 encoder. The Pazera LAME front-end gives you access to most (maybe all) of the options.
As they say, everybody is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts.
The “joint stereo” part of the encoding (conversion to Mid/Side and back to Left/Right during decoding) is lossless so it can’t hurt and it usually works better (giving you better quality or smaller files).
It’s also “smart” and it decides when to use M/S frame-by-frame. For example if you have French on the left and English on the right, there is no advantage to M/S and Joint Stereo it won’t use it. But it will still be “Joint Stereo” (so the decoder knows what to do) even though left & right are encoded separately.
FLAC uses something similar to Joint Stereo and you don’t have a choice. I assume AAC/MP4/M4A and all of the other popular formats do too.
Thank you gentlemen for your answers and your precise explanations.
I think I’m going to explore this subject a little more, but more out of passion than out of real necessity: I too have aging ears, and according to accepted rules, it seems that I shouldn’t hear much anymore… beyond 10 kHz.
It was a pleasure.
Claude
