Sound Quality After File Conversion from Stereo to Mono

[dspargo]

I work in a office where I can listen to music with my headphones using the left one. I want to take my stereo files and convert them to mono using dBpoweramp Music Converter. It is easy enough to do but I do have some concerns.

Originally I used an adapter to go from stereo to mono and my perception was that it muddied the sound. There are some DSP effects I can use in J. River Media Center 17 but I feel like those mess things up too. I even looked into getting a mono headphone amp but those are not easy to find and I would rather not buy a whole new amp. I am using a CEntrance DACport and love it because of the sound quality and it takes up minimal space on my desk.

I've done some research and it looks like I might need a summing box.

Basically I don't want to have to change my setup too much and would like to know if the conversion from stereo to mono is going to affect the sound quality like the adapter. I've listened to some converted files and they do seem to sound good. I do realized that I will be losing the stereo affect and the nuances with that.

Thank you in advance for your help. This has been driving me crazy finding a solution that has minimal changes to my WAV files.

[Spoon]

Re: Sound Quality After File Conversion from Stereo to Mono

You should be ok, occasionally you might get clipping, so use the DSP effects:

Bit depth (to float)
Channels (to mono)
Volume Normalize (Peak)
Bitdepth (to 16 bit)

this will stop any clipping

[dspargo]

Re: Sound Quality After File Conversion from Stereo to Mono

I am a bit of an audiophile (actually a big one). Does making these changes to the file degrade the sound quality? I was using the stereo to mono adapter and could tell the difference.

[MST08154711]

Re: Sound Quality After File Conversion from Stereo to Mono

Being audiophile and reencoding stereo files to mono for listening with one ear only doesnt really fit together...

MST

[dspargo]

Re: Sound Quality After File Conversion from Stereo to Mono

Hello Spoon,

Below is what I set up per your post:

1) Bit Depth: Fixed Bit Depth 32 Bit Float
2) Channel Count: Fixed Channel Count 1
3) Volume Normalize: Fixed Amplification -6dB (I did this different than what you said because in my research it seems that this would result in the volume of the file being change by a fixed amount instead of peak adjusting the file like replay gain which i want to avoid...I could easily be wrong about this
4) Bit Depth: Fixed Bit Depth 16 Bit

Does this look OK to you?

So far they sound great but I will have to do some more testing in the next couple of days.

I really appreciate your help with this. I have 1TB of WAV files that I have used your solution to rip from CD and don't want to make the mistake of converting them (I'm keeping the stereo files) the wrong way.

Thank you,

Don

[Spoon]

Re: Sound Quality After File Conversion from Stereo to Mono

I see no issues if you want to apply -6dB