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Author Topic: Stereo to mono and back to stereo  (Read 3723 times)

Starchild1

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Stereo to mono and back to stereo
« on: December 01, 2015, 05:57:29 pm »

Hi,

I've got a couple of albums that are stereo but for reasons I don't understand the mix splits the singer and his instrument such that vocal is coming from the right and the guitar is coming the left.  I find this to be much more enjoyable as a mono playback.  I know I can go into dsp and select mono in the output format for that album.  However, when I go to the next album the output format remains in mono and I have to manually changew it back to stereo.  How do I set it up so that the dsp automatically changes back to stereo when I play a different disk?

Thanks
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blgentry

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Re: Stereo to mono and back to stereo
« Reply #1 on: December 01, 2015, 06:20:46 pm »

Apparently, this hard panned vocal and instrument practice was common on early (stereo) Beatles albums.  I had access to a preamp for a while that had a unique balance control that allowed you to merge left into right selectively from a hard pan, to fully centered, and even to reverse.  Really cool feature for those rare albums.

MC has the ability to apply DSP on a per song basis, but it comes with some serious setup and maintenance.  You can mark a song to use any DSP present you want.  BUT!  As soon as you use one, the DSP will "stick" to that preset until it hits another song with a different preset, or you change it manually.

In practice what this means is, you need to mark EVERY song in your library with a base preset.  Then apply special presets to songs that need them.  This, for me, is way too much work, especially in an ongoing fashion, as I add new songs to my library.  So I don't use the feature.  But it might be great for you.

If I were in your situation, I would externally process the hard panned songs, and probably make them have a more mild pan.  Maybe 15% off of center for the left sound and the same for the right sound.  That way they wouldn't be "hard mono", but wouldn't be super far panned either.  Then, whenever you play these songs *anywhere* they'd have the same sound.  I'd also probably save the originals somewhere else and mark them so that I didn't play them in MC.

Just some thoughts.

Brian.
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Starchild1

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Re: Stereo to mono and back to stereo
« Reply #2 on: December 01, 2015, 08:54:03 pm »

I was afraid you were going to say that.  The disk in question was a Live John Lee Hooker album "Live At Sugar Hill vol. 2" released in 1967.  I guess I'll have to continue manually changing dsp back to a stereo when I play that disk.  It just sounds so much better in mono!

Thanks,
Mike
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RD James

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Re: Stereo to mono and back to stereo
« Reply #3 on: December 03, 2015, 05:37:54 am »

MC has the ability to apply DSP on a per song basis, but it comes with some serious setup and maintenance.  You can mark a song to use any DSP present you want.  BUT!  As soon as you use one, the DSP will "stick" to that preset until it hits another song with a different preset, or you change it manually.

In practice what this means is, you need to mark EVERY song in your library with a base preset.  Then apply special presets to songs that need them.  This, for me, is way too much work, especially in an ongoing fashion, as I add new songs to my library.  So I don't use the feature.  But it might be great for you.
And me. I hope they fix it.
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Matt

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Re: Stereo to mono and back to stereo
« Reply #4 on: December 03, 2015, 06:57:59 am »

And me. I hope they fix it.

What would a "fix" look like?

We load the DSP preset at playback time, and once it loads, it blows away the settings that were there.  So the only way back is to make another preset that restores.  Which you commented on as the solution.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

Matt

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Re: Stereo to mono and back to stereo
« Reply #5 on: December 03, 2015, 07:24:15 am »

I've got a bad idea that I floated to Hendrik that we could save the existing configuration right before loading a preset and then restore back to it when playing a file without a configuration set.  Not sure the idea is any good, but at least we're thinking :P
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

blgentry

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Re: Stereo to mono and back to stereo
« Reply #6 on: December 03, 2015, 10:26:58 am »

I started a new thread about per song DSP here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=101743.0

Brian.
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