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Topic: 2 channels or 1 channel (Read 1146 times) previous topic - next topic
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2 channels or 1 channel

I was looking at The Beatles mono remasters today in fb2k - it reports 2 channels for each song. As mono songs, shouldn't they be 1 channel?

The average bit rate for all the songs is 520 kbps (FLAC). The albums Help! and Rubber Soul have stereo versions as well - their average bit rate is 840 kbps. Is that my answer right there? Are the mono versions actually 1 channel, but fb2k outputs to 2 channels and reports it that way? Or something like that?

A little confused here. I was thinking I should encode them as mono since they are mono, but I'm suspecting FLAC has taken care of that already.
 

2 channels or 1 channel

Reply #1 –
As audio CDs are stereo by design, mono CDs only have the same information duplicated in each channel. Most rippers do not and probably cannot guarantee that the mono is perfectly mono, or at least have no tools to verify if a downmix is lossless, so the files are encoded as stereo. Do note that both lossy and lossless formats have optimizations for low or no stereo complexity, so a mono encoded as stereo file should not be much larger than an actual mono file, at least when using quality based lossy, or lossless. Theoretically, at least.

You're welcome to test by running a track or two through the Downmix channels to mono and then Convert mono to stereo DSP filters, using the converter, then use the bit comparison utility component to compare the original to the converted output.