New feature to the file conversion

[Timo Wuori]

Hello!
I have noticed that old 78's recorded stereo often have differences in channels. In the start of a recording clicks or distortion may be bigger in left channel and in the end of the record it has changed to right channel. Now I would like to have feature that when converting to mono selects the better channel on the run. If I am correct it would be easy to do, just take the sample of the channel that is nearer to zero.
Timo Wuori, Helsinki, Finland

[Rick]

Re: New feature to the file conversion

Timo
Interesting idea. If the channels sound significantly different, then switching abruptly may be noticable on the resulting file. Another thing you would have to worry about is level matching. If the volume is different between channels, then you would need to compensate.
We had a form of this eary on in the life of DCart where we would select the best channel from either the right or the left channel. This worked OK, but we could not get the switching to be inaudable. There would always be a change in the sound as you switched.

Prehaps we could modify the Channel blender to crossfade between left and right channels under user control. This would be usefull for selecting channel slowly from the start of the file to the end.

[Timo Wuori]

Re: New feature to the file conversion

If the channels aren't in balance, they should be first balanced, that is sure. Swithching between channels should be so fast that there is no way of hearing that the channel has changed. Minority of recordings does have this phenomenom that clicks are bigger on either channel and that they are first bigger in left channel and at the end they are bigger in right. But is there something wrong in my thinking that taking the sample that is nearer zero results automatic to selecting a channel that has smaller clicks. Bear in mind that we are talking about 78's.
Timo Wuori

[Rick Barber]

Re: New feature to the file conversion

I to have seen this phenomenon but I tend to think it is the recording process and not the record. I could be wrong, JMHO.

[Craig Maier]

Re: New feature to the file conversion

My experience is that if one channel has a click, so does the other. The only difference is that sometimes one channel has a much larger click than the other channel. So, one may as well interpolate anyway since I do not think it makes too much sense to replace a big click with a small one. I almost never see a situation wherein one channel has a click and the other has no click whatsoever (even if that were the case, the crosstalk that takes place in the phono cartridge would not allow it to remain totally isolated to one channel).