Convert samples to mono

It would be useful to add an effect for turning stereo samples to mono, for example to remove unwanted stereo information from basses and drum hits, undo overzealous stereo processing in breakbeats or separate out instruments in old jazz recordings.

Once 1.1 and the rumored stereo recording hits this will be an even more desirable feature to have.

What is the problem?

There is currently no way to turn stereo samples loaded from the SD card to mono.

What do you want to achieve?

Turn stereo samples (loaded from the SD card) to mono. Preferably providing the same options the MPC does: left channel only, right channel only or left and right channel combined.

Are there any workarounds?

No, unless you count doing it before you store samples to the SD card,

Any links to related discussions?

This asks to allow importing stereo samples as two mono samples. The result would be a workaround for the feature requested here.

Any references to other products?

MPCs allow you to choose between left channel only, right channel only or left and right channel combined.

SP 404 allows turning stereo samples to mono by selecting either the left channel or the right channel.

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Thanks for the wish @rhmtts and a big thanks for following the best practices :clap:

@here Thanks for your contribution, the wish is now ready for voting! :slight_smile:

I wanted to make a wish like this for Play Plus.
I use Bitwig which has no way of exporting as monofile.
An option to import left, right or summed mono in addition to stereo would be great to save memoryspace.

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Ah, yes, it would also save memory space. Didn’t think about that :slight_smile:

My goal was to get better sound.

Maybe a mid or side mono-izer would be good then :grin:

I’m sure you are aware that you could just take that export and render it down to mono in something like Audicity or Ocenaudio (which both are free). If you are on Windows i can also recommend FileConverter, if you are looking for a quick solution.

This would be extremely useful for me!

A lot of the material I sample has a wide stereo field. This can make it awkward to work with. It would be huuge if I could mix it to mono inside of Tracker.

Voted! I’m always surprised when I see a stereo sampler / sample player without stereo management utilities.

Could be in the sample editor, as an effect: “Stereo field”, with options like L+R mono / L only mono / R only mono / a stereo spread reducer and enhancer

BTW, on the same subject, I find that the mono sampling options should be right in the sampling menu instead of buried in the system pref.

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Bumping this one, because it bums me a lot in my daily use of the t+ !

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Myself I’d like a super simple “Convert To Mono” effect added to the Sample Editor page. I often record from a mono source and end up with a stereo file that takes up twice as much RAM as needed. Why can’t I knock it back down to mono?

Or I guess a more generous function on the Sample Editor page would be “Sample Format” effect which would have options to (1) change from stereo to mono (2) change sample rate (with or without changing playback rate) (3) change bit depth. All three of these would be hugely helpful in managing RAM consumption.

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bump, having this funcions would be awesome

I would lo to see an option for mono projects on play+ an tracker mini and +. I have Play + and I don’t know if tha samples on the sample pool are mono o stereo so maybe they are eating precious limited space of my project.

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This is a good feature, if you by accident sample in stereo but is sending a mono-signal, then it makes a noise channel after you normalize the same, which means that your sample becomes useless…

I made drum samples by myself it’s hard to work on them in stereo. It would be cool to have this mono L or R option like on the SP404mk2

heavy bump, this feature is important part of sampling process. Especially in sampling old 60s vinyl records

Ocenaudio has been useful to me for making samples mono and at the same time changing the sample rate - it seems to do the latter more reliably than Audacity. That’s good if you are transferring a set of samples from a different machine.

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This is also one of those essential features, which I don’t understand is being ignored by the Polyend Development team.

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I hope it will come soon, it’s a bit tiring to edit everything in a daw beforehand.

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This is a really important feature missing from the Tracker +

Not sure how one is expected to deal with stereo information if you can’t combine it.

I tried the import low quality function thinking that’d bring it into mono but doesn’t.

Several ways this could be implemented so look forward to hearing from developers about the next updates.