Identical 2 channel stereo mix.

[Deter]

Have some live recordings which are basically mono tracks. They are two channel audio which match up perfect on both speakers. Since that is all I have can't do multi tracking or mixing. Really have no idea how to create true stereo out of these recordings. Messed around with remixing them in AC-3, but it really didn't work. Who knows it could work. My questions is how do you create width and dept out of an identical 2 channel stereo mix. Been able to create a quasi mix but is not that great.

[hello_hello]

Are the mono tracks exactly the same or are they kind of like a stereo track separated into two mono files? If it's the latter you should be able to import them into Audacity, pan one to the left, the other right, and export them as a single stereo file.

[jagabo]

My questions is how do you create width and dept out of an identical 2 channel stereo mix.

You don't. You can try hokey things like assigning different frequency bands to the two channels. Or adding a phase shift to one channel. But you will never get a true stereo track out of two identical channels.

[Cornucopia]

Hahaha. And this from the person that in that other thread said I don't know what I'm talking about regarding AC3/DTS-CDs! (which, BTW, you were totally wrong about and would have known this if you had ever checked on many of my past posts on the subject)

As jagabo (and I have often) said, YOU DON'T.
This is a major axiom in creative media: "The effort involved in ELEVATING a work to a higher level of immediacy (Mono->Stereo, Stereo->Multichannel, B/W->Color, 2D->3D) is nearly equal to the effort involved in CREATING that work already at that level of immediacy."

Here is how you would do it:
1. Unmix & separate the track into multiple tracks by isolating, through pre-filtering, pattern-matching, external guide tracks, etc. Similar to what you would do in advanced NR.
2. Sweeten/Enhance the isolated tracks to "improve" perceivable quality.
3. Re-mix to 5.1

Scott

[jagabo]

If you just want an airy diffuse sound add a ~1 ms phase delay to one channel. Or invert one channel.

[Cornucopia]

re: phase delay or inversion,
It might "fool" a few people who don't pay attention, but most would think it was $h!T.

Scott

[jagabo]

most would think it was $h!T.

Of course.

[Deter]

Never got any emails that anyone replied to this, but on google was looking up out of phase mono tracks and got my own thread....Funny....

Found an old recording (3 CD set) were only one of the tracks sounded ok. It is the same thing as above, soundboard mix of 2 channel mono tracks to a stereo file. One of the songs was messed up. Decided to go and try to fix the problem. In doing so found that on this recording that the mono tracks had a slight delay. The only track that sounded good had no delay.

A lot of these older soundboard mono mixes usually don't match up perfect with volume. Normally one of the channels was recorded at a slightly different level.

On this new problem still working on different things to fix the problem. On the damaged track once the sound file becomes wrecked, the delay when it picks up again becomes greater. Than it resets itself.

The simple fix for this would be just to pull the left channel out and use the right channel matched up to itself. Trying to avoid doing this, still in testing mode.

Scott,

On the 5.1 mixes if you just rip or pull the audio files you going to get an unbalanced recording. I did this to make things easier and than when I was testing out a mix found it didn't have the same richness, depth, and sound as some of the old 2003 mixes. Since this test back in Oct of 2012, decided to add in another element that even pushes the 5.1 mixdowns to another level. That is all I can say at this point in time.

Back to my orginal post on this topic, still not sure what I want to do with some of these recordings, it is still in test mode.

PS It is actually nice to get away from video restoration and just work on audio.

[Cornucopia]

There is so much inaccuracy, circular/internal referencing and confusion in the above post (made less understandable by the GSP problems), that I don't even know where to start.
But I'll give you this:
INTER-Channel delay is easy to fix in any audio editor.
INTRA-Channel delay is much harder but is still possible when the timing/phase of the delay and its amplitude is is constant. In those situations, you could try recursive delayed phase inversion (feedback loop), which, if done correctly will get you a signal plus a late echo of itself at much lower level (Nearly not noticeable).

Scott

[Deter]

Nobody has replied back to this, deleted the sample files.

After a few weeks of research and testing have figured this out.

Doom9 has a nice forum in reference to this.

Tisdu??? was the start.

Knew it was possible to turn these mono recordings in to something.

The 1st step which is really hard.

You need to take the recording and play it on a 5.1 reciever

Why?

What you need to do is mix the recording in a manor that it plays in all 5 speakers. Normally these mono/stereo tracks will only play in the center channel.

Or they do play in the Front speakers it is very dim & a weak signal.

How to do you this? I kind of don't know, was messin around with mono recordings and just doing random mixes and one of them took, need to go back and figure out what was done.

Once this step is completed, you than have something to work with.

There are a few other ways to remaster these things, the ladder is very complex and requires a lot of work to pull the tracks out of the recording and than remix as if they were recorded in a Multi track manor.

For right now, sticking with my quadraphonics method in analog!! (just taking what I was doing with 5.1 mixes and adding to it) The concept is the same but the results are different we are mixing 1 channel to two and on the flip 5 channels to 2. But we create space & width using four channels in a two channel recording. YEA IT IS CONFUSING !!!

Love the 70ties....Don't know why quadraphonics phased out for car systems it is the best way to mix audio.

What we have though is one single source audio all messed together, the sound is in the recording it just needs to be channeled in a different manor to create feeling and width.

[Deter]

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[Deter]

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