Odd behaviours on joining and splitting stereo tracks

[steve]

You can mix the stereo channel to mono by putting both pan controls in the middle. You can reduce the stereo spread by panning each control a bit off maximum. You can flip the channels in the mix by reversing the pan controls.

Good point Bill, but they are a different sort of "pan" to what Audacity has. You are now suggesting that Audacity has real pan controls rather than just attenuating one or other channel (a good idea IMO, but I think that goes a lot further than just a GUI modification).

[Gale Andrews]

With regard to Pan and Gain:
One way that Audacity could "do the right thing" and make transparent what it is doing would be to replace the pan slider on stereo tracks with a second gain slider so that there is one gain slider per channel.

I "almost" posted a suggestion to have second (greyed out) pan/gain sliders for the right channel which would "disappear" when you "touched" the "real" slider or rendered. I think either of our ideas could be confusing in different ways (and mine is not space-efficient unless there is some other way to show it).

I think rendering before making stereo would be more intrusive than after (only needed if you make a pan/gain change). Before is a more "natural" place to do it.

With regard to Envelopes:
This would not be a problem if there was an option to adjust only one channel. Say, click and drag with the Envelope tool to adjust both channels, or shift+drag to adjust only one channel. This would have benefits beyond the specific problems being discussed here.

There are already two votes on Feature Requests for this (which suggest a Track Control Panel button to do it). So why not see how many votes we can add. +1 from me.



Gale

[billw58]

Pondering this some more, this is how I think Audacity should behave when joining two single tracks into stereo.

If the pan and/or gain settings on the two channels are different when the user selects Make Stereo Track, Audacity should warn:

Warning
The gain and pan settings on the lower track will be replaced with the
gain and pan settings of the upper track. If this is not what you want
to happen you should instead Mix and Render the two tracks.
[Cancel] [Continue]

Then if the user continues, Audacity does what it said it would do.

The pan and gain settings of the lower track are (eventually) replaced with the pan and gain settings of the resulting stereo track when the user changes them. A normal Audacity stereo track does not support different pan and gain settings for the left and right channels. Make Stereo Track should make a legal stereo track. In its current configuration Make Stereo Track can produce a situation where what you hear does not correspond to the settings you see - this must be considered a bug.

-- Bill

[Gale Andrews]

At least if you change the gain when the track is rejoined you can undo it to preserve your separate channel gains - confusing as it is to undo a gain change and not see a change on the gain slider.

I guess since Peter will delete this in due course there is no point splitting it for the discussion of separate gain/pan/envelope for stereo pairs. I think we have 2 votes here (Me, Steve?) for separate envelope points in a stereo pair.

(I think) channels being reversed in some cases when joining stereo is a bug. Then there is unintuitive behaviour if you make stereo on a pair that has separate gain/pan settings (which is probably closer to a bug/bugzilla enhancement than a "feature request").


Gale

[Edgar]

I think we have 2 votes here (Me, Steve?) for separate envelope points in a stereo pair.

+1

(I think) channels being reversed in some cases when joining stereo is a bug.

+1

Then there is unintuitive behaviour if you make stereo on a pair that has separate gain/pan settings (which is probably closer to a bug/bugzilla enhancement than a "feature request").

bug +1 -- neither enhancement nor FR.

[steve]

I think we have 2 votes here (Me, Steve?) for separate envelope points in a stereo pair.

As long as it is in addition to working on both channels together, which is what I think most users will want 99% of the time.

(I think) channels being reversed in some cases when joining stereo is a bug.

I think I must be missing the point with this one as I've never noticed channels being reversed when joining stereo and I don't know how to produce that behaviour. Could someone give a step-by-step method to reproduce.

Then there is unintuitive behaviour if you make stereo on a pair that has separate gain/pan settings (which is probably closer to a bug/bugzilla enhancement than a "feature request").

I don't know the solution, but I think it must be a bug that the visual indications can say that one thing will happen when something different is actually done.

[Gale Andrews]

I think we have 2 votes here (Me, Steve?) for separate envelope points in a stereo pair.

As long as it is in addition to working on both channels together, which is what I think most users will want 99% of the time.

Definitely an option.

I think I must be missing the point ... as I've never noticed channels being reversed when joining stereo and I don't know how to produce that behaviour. Could someone give a step-by-step method to reproduce.

I think it's these three cases that I mentioned about half way through this topic.

The "problem" comes when the right is the upper track and/or the left is the lower AND the tracks have a different mono/left/right property -:

Track 1 Right
Track 2 Left

Track 1 Right
Track 2 Mono

Track 1 Mono
Track 2 Left

So generate a tone, Tracks > Add New > Audio Track, Generate Noise, set one of the above three cases e.g. set tone to right and noise to left, then Make Stereo Track.


Gale

[steve]

I think I must be missing the point with this one as I've never noticed channels being reversed when joining stereo and I don't know how to produce that behaviour.

So generate a tone, Tracks > Add New > Audio Track, Generate Noise, set one of the above three cases e.g. set tone to right and noise to left, then Make Stereo Track.

Before Make Stereo Track:

tracks000.png (17.01 KiB) Viewed 1202 times

After Make Stereo Track:

tracks001.png (14.2 KiB) Viewed 1202 times

I can see and hear that the channel allocation has changed, but I told it to do that. I set the upper track as the upper channel of a stereo pair and the lower track as the lower channel of a stereo pair and as we all know, the upper channel of a stereo pair is always the left channel and the lower channel is always the right channel (which brings us neatly back to Koz's original point that it may not be obvious to all users).

[Gale Andrews]

Before Make Stereo Track/ After Make Stereo Track

Yes, and which channel does the "right channel" tone come out of after Make Stereo Track?


Gale

[steve]

Sorry Gale, you jumped in a bit quick

Yes, and which channel does the "right channel" tone come out of after Make Stereo Track?

I can see and hear that the channel allocation has changed, but I told it to do that. I set the upper track as the upper channel of a stereo pair and the lower track as the lower channel of a stereo pair and as we all know, the upper channel of a stereo pair is always the left channel and the lower channel is always the right channel (which brings us neatly back to Koz's original point that it may not be obvious to all users).