Interleave stereo

2016-02-06 02:53:28

I have an unusual recording problem. I apparently inadvertently recorded voice in stereo instead of mono. It appears that the recording was divided between the channels rather than recorded in dual mono. For example, sample 1 went to left channel, sample 2 went to right channel, 3 to left, and so on and so forth. So it sounds fine (albeit with less fidelity) if I just half the playback rate, but obviously I'd want to interleave the samples to get the intended recording. Anyone have any idea how that could be achieved?

Re: Interleave stereo

Reply #1 – 2016-02-06 04:37:08

Could you post a clip and let us play with it?

G²

Re: Interleave stereo

Reply #2 – 2016-02-06 05:37:04

Okay.
https://mega.nz/#!w8xDhZoA!5GdH0s2gwS0KIBqaKDGwXfsQOSFDDg-fz3HUUjWmBd8

Re: Interleave stereo

Reply #3 – 2016-02-06 06:12:39

Standard stereo to mono conversion should do the trick with a multi-track editor like Audacity, if deleting one of them sounds terrible.

It sounds like stereo hiss to me mixed with other things that are more or less centered.  Your voice is dead center to me leading me to believe it's your sound card or your speakers.

Re: Interleave stereo

Reply #4 – 2016-02-06 10:39:55

From your description, it sounds as if the header of the file is wrong, as in it says it is a stereo file but the contents are actually mono.

The easier way to correct it is to open it in an audio editor:
I've done these steps with Audacity:
1) Open flac file (wav file in your case)
2) Export audio, select "other non compressed types" , select "Raw (header-less)" and "16bit PCM" and save.
3) Import audio, Raw data and select mono 44khz 16bits little endian.
4) Export as wav.

The solution given by Chibisteven would delete half of the samples, so it does not really reconstruct the original file

Re: Interleave stereo

Reply #5 – 2016-02-06 17:08:19

I downloaded your file and the sample rate is 22050Hz, but the speed and pitch are normal.

Re: Interleave stereo

Reply #6 – 2016-02-06 19:03:35

If it really is mono being misinterpreted as stereo, flac.exe can fix it for you:

flac -d "Untitled (2).flac" -o temp.pcm --force-raw-format --endian little --sign signed
flac -8 temp.pcm --force-raw-format --endian little --sign signed --channels 1 --bps 16 --sample-rate 44100

Re: Interleave stereo

Reply #7 – 2016-02-07 04:56:37

Thanks for all the help! JAZ's suggestion worked. I was thinking a bit about this and I think this may have been the result of a glitch having to do with unexpected shutdown session restoration on an unsaved file. Ah well, all is well that ends well.