Flatten stereo to mono, pull out one side on its own, or swap the channels around — whichever the file needs.
Mono files are half the size of stereo at the same quality, which is why almost every voice recording should be mono.
Stereo is two separate recordings played at once, one for each ear. This tool rearranges those two channels — flattening them together, keeping one, or swapping them over.
To mono averages the left and right into a single channel. For anything recorded on one microphone — a voice memo, an interview, a lecture — this halves the file size and loses nothing, because both channels held the same thing anyway. Left only and right only are the ones to reach for when an interview was recorded with one person per channel, or when a bad cable left one side silent and you want to rescue the good one.
Swap sides fixes a recording where the microphones were plugged in the wrong way round. Invert right flips one channel upside down, which is a diagnostic trick: if the sound almost disappears when you then play it in mono, the two channels were fighting each other.
Only genuine stereo information — a wide music mix will lose its sense of space. For anything recorded on a single microphone there is nothing to lose, and you halve the file size.
Usually a faulty cable or an input set to the wrong side during recording. Use "left only" or "right only" to keep the good side and turn it into a clean mono file.
It flips that channel’s waveform upside down. It is a test: if the audio nearly vanishes when combined to mono afterwards, the two channels were out of phase, which is why it sounded thin.
No. It copies the same audio to both sides so that players and editors expecting two channels behave. It cannot invent width that was never recorded.
No — it is one channel instead of two, not lower quality. A mono MP3 at 128 kbps has the same detail as a stereo one at 256 kbps, because the bits are not being split two ways.