Mono to Stereo

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

New guy looking for the starting gate.
I want to take a mono recording of a two person conversation and put one person on each track…

Long story short -I’m trying to make a school display using two talking skulls. The heart of the system is a sound board that activates a servo (jaw) and LEDs (eyes) to sound. Using two board one set to left channel and one set to the right . a stereo input makes it look like they are talking.

Now I have a mono copy of Abbott and Costello’s Who’s on First… I want to split them into Abbot on one channel and Costello on the other… I know this is will be a lot of hard work. But can someone point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance

2

LOL - that sounds great - I’d love to see it :smiley:

Using Audacity 1.3.5 (a lot better for this kind of thing than 1.2.6)

Open or Import your original mono recording - is it on a single mono track, or a stereo track with identical audio on both tracks?

If it is a single mono track:
Click on the name of the track (by default this will be “Audio Track” and change the channel from “mono” to “left”.
From the “Tracks” menu select “Add New > Audio Track”
Click on the name of the new track and select “right channel”

If it is a stereo track with identical audio on both tracks:
Click on the name of the track and select “Split Stereo Track”
Select one of the tracks (lets say the lower track) and from the Edit menu select “Silence”.

You now have 2 track - the upper one (Left channel) has the sound track on it, and the lower track (Right channel) has silence. You could change the name of these tracks to “Abbott” and “Costello” if you wish (click on the track name, and select “Name”)

How to move audio from the left track to the right track:

  • Select the region on the upper track that you want to move (the left channel)
  • Select “Split delete” from the Edit menu (or press Alt+Ctrl+K). This will cut the audio, leaving silence in its place.
  • Press “Enter” (to deselect the left track)
  • Press the “down” cursor (to move focus to the lower track)
  • Press “Enter” (to select the same region of the lower track)
  • Press “Ctrl+V” (to paste)

Repeat the process as necessary.

Note that this is going to be a lot of work, so it may be advisable to make backup copies along the way.
To back up the individual tracks (the safest method)

Select the upper track.
From the File menu select “Export Selected”
Follow the on screen dialogue to export as a WAV file with a unique file name (for example “left_01,wav”).
Repeat for the lower track.

If, as Murphy’s Law would have it, there is a power cut 5 minutes before you were due to finish, then you will be able to create a new project and import your most recent backup files.

Finally, Export your finished project as a WAV file. You may also want to save the Audacity project in case you need to make any additional changes. See here about Audacity projects - they are not just the .aup file !!!
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=File_Management_Tips