Question

Hello everyone,

I have PreSonus One 3.5.2 WinX64.  I produce daily 5-10 minute long podcasts and need to record and export the mixdown in MONO in the lowest size file possible.  But everytime I send it to the people that distribute it, they tell me it's in Stereo.

I try to make the setting permanent but I'm not sure how to do it and if I'm doing it right.  Not a pro at this.  Started using this program some 5 weeks ago.  Please, help. Any advice is most appreciated.

Answer 1

Moin,

I believe the mp3 encoder in S1 is hardwired to do stereo output. The reason might be that many mp3 codecs out there will actually create a "doubled mono channel" for a "mono file", which is, technically, still stereo.

If my assumption is correct, you may have to add a tool to your pipeline. FFMPEG is free (ffmpeg.org) and you could create a batch or do it manually - something like this:

ffmpeg -i YourExported.wav -ac 1 MonoOutput.mp3

Note that I would not export an mp3 from S1 for this kind of pipeline because you would compress your original material, decompress it in ffmpeg and recompress again, which would most likely lead to lots of artifacts being introduced.

You can use ffmpeg to reduce the bitrate, too. Have a look at its documentation, it's quite extensive.

I hope this helps!

Marc