mono music

[skar]

i'm thinking about encoding my music files in mono in the future (audio cds for my mp3 player). I'll use the ogg format btw.

advantages: -smaller file size
-less to do for the player so batteries might even last longer

i usually can't hear any difference between the left and right ear anyways or sometimes only have one earphone in the ear.

So any reasons why this might be a bad idea?

[greay]

I wouldn't do it because the idea of cutting one of the channels out of my music is anathema to me. And headphones are when the difference between the channels is really apparent.

But since you don't care about that, it wouldn't be a problem -- but one forseeable problem is that your player may play mono files through one headphone only. Which drives me crazy (I had headphones for a while that were broken, and sound would only come through one -- I stopped listening to music on the go until I bought a new pair).

I'd be really surprised if mono sound files made the batteries last longer.

[melancholy]

The problem I see lies in that making your audio files mono would force sound out of only one speaker. And when you would go and correct that by copying the sound from one channel into the other, you are essencially adding the file size right back. So the space saved would be very minimal. Also, mono sound will have absolutely no effect on battery life whatsoever.

[MulletMan13]

This is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard in my life. Sketchy compatibility, horrible sound, and bloated filesizes... you may want to reconsider.

[Specially Cork]

Encoding to mono would significantly reduce the size of the file as you would only be keeping one channel of sound, and if you are:
1) Not picky about cutting a whole channel out of music (I couldnt do this, its just so wrong)
and
2) Using a player that can recognize its mono, and play the single channel sound out of both speakers/headphones
I guess it could work for you.

As for battery life, I cant see how it would change anything.

[SuperMegatron]

Just encode it in stereo but use a lower bit rate. Thats what i do with my old dylan and dead stuff the quality isnt there anyway so why use the space.

[WhtCastle]

I do that for the work mp3 player I use, because I only have one earphone in. If I wore both, I would probably keep it stereo though.

[skar]

-i assume my program would merge both stereo channels to one mono channel. That's at least what audacity does when converting files from stereo to mono, not sure bout cdex.
-the mp3player has to decode both channels to play the file. Playing a mono file it'd have to decode only one -> half the work to do. Considering batteries are used up faster when my player decodes ogg instead of mp3, i guess it does matter how busy it's processor is.

yet i'll stay with stereo for the simple reason that i'm way too lazy to reencode my music.

[Thomas]

yet i'll stay with stereo for the simple reason that i'm way too lazy to reencode my music.

laziness is the key to life my friend.

[MetalGearRay]

Shouldn't mono filesizes be half the size of stereo filesizes? Why isn't it that way?

[BlackAura]

Because you'd actually have to reduce the bitrate to decrease the filesize. An MP3 encoded at 128kbps will be the same size, no matter what the sample rate or number of channels. Some encoders (such as LAME) are smart enough to guess a decent sample rate, but if you explicitly set a bitrate you'll always end up with the same file size.

In the case of MP3s, dropping to mono doesn't really gain you anything in filesize. MP3s typically use joint stereo, which doesn't encode a stereo track as two separate tracks, but as a single track with information about the differences between the left and right channels. It's lower quality than separate stereo, but doesn't increase the amount of data you need. So a 64kbps mono MP3 will actually sound worse than a 128kbps stereo MP3, because you've halved the data rate without actually halving the amount of data being encoded.

With something like Ogg Vorbis, which uses constant quality VBR and separate channels, dropping to mono would actually halve the size of the resulting file.

[greay]

yet i'll stay with stereo for the simple reason that i'm way too lazy to reencode my music.

laziness is the key to life my friend.

and in this case laziness is the key to better music.

[WhtCastle]

Even if you are lazy, the Lame codex with Razorlame front end is EASY AS HELL. Look into it. You can do mass encoding and such, simple drag and drop.