How to convert 2 mono’s to a single st
I’m currently using n-Track on a project for the final mastering stage of a recording. The device that I’m using for the recording and mixdown stage will export a stereo mixdown as two separate wave files (a left, and a right).
I’d like to be able to process these tracks as a single stereo track. However, while it’s obvious how to split a stereo track into 2 mono tracks, I don’t know how to go in the other direction.
Is there a simple process for doing this that I’m missing?
Any help would be appreciated!
-fred
The easiest way I know is to use a wav editor. Or, if you don’t have one, here’s what you do. Create an .sng file. import the two wavs as two tracks. pan hard left and right. mixdown. there ya go.
fish
Hey Fish -
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll probably use your idea of an intermediate project/mixdown stage - shouldn’t loose to much info there.
I do have an external wave editor, but it doesn’t support 24-bit (SF-Xp 4.0 - ancient, came with an old sound card). and my recorder is 24-bit.
Huh, it’d be simple to write a program to comine to tracks - but the fidelity loss is probably close to zero w/ a mixdown.
But, my main question is answered: no way to do it w/ N. Too bad.
Thanks!
-fred
You can use Audacity as a wave editor to combine the left and right mono waves to a stereo wave. It’s free and it supports 24 bit.
It’s rather simple. Just launch Audacity and under Project, import the two mono files. Click on the track name for each file and set them to Left and Right respectively and pan them accordingly. Then under File, select Export as WAV.
However, Fish’s method works just as well.
-Ken
i’d say importing into n and mixing down is easiest.
I’d just import them into N as separate tracks, pan them hard left/right and then render those tracks down to new stereo file using “file/mixdown song” (or ctrl-R).
At first I wasn’t going to bother looking at this thread, since it’s pretty trivial in N. But I thought I’d take a look, and whaddyknow folks are running to their wave editors!
Guitars & sekim are on the money. Import, pan apart, mixdown, and then import the result. Nuttin to it. 
Regardless, make sure the two files are aligned together correctly. (They wouldn’t be, for example, if you’d MP3-compressed them and then expanded them.) Most likely they will be by default, but best to make sure. Leave the count-in click in both channels at the start. Make sure it’s a mono click source, and zoom way in and check. This is the case regardless of what tool you use for the job.
Too bad you didn’t do your mixing in N too, though. But sometimes that’s how things work out. Especially if you’ve recorded in a hardware DAW and have punch-ins. But once you’ve come over to “the DAWk side”, you’ll never want to go back. 