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Batch processing in Audacity: Convert mono to stereo and add the pseudostereo effect

Submitted by Druss on Mon, 2022-01-03 22:14

So I had a bunch of audio files in mono and wanted to convert them to sterero. This is pretty much just a case of copying the single-channel mono stream and pasting it into the two separate channels of the stereo track. I then also wanted to add a fake effect that makes this new dubious stereo track sound something like a genuine stereo track. All this is possible in Audacity. What's more, the program allows batch processing which allowed me to automate this task across a bunch of files.

  1. Doing this requires the pseudo-stereo plugin. Download it and copy the file into the plugins folder withing the Audacity installation directory. Restart Audacity if necessary and enable the plugin via Effects menu -> Add/remove plugins.
  2. Automation in Audacity is now performed using 'macros'. They can be accessed via Tools -> Macros. In the Manage Macros dialog, create a new macro and called it something appropriate like 'mono to stereo with pseudo-stereo effect'.
  3. You can either manually add each of the steps for the macro based on the commands below, or you can create a text file named monotostereo.txt and past the following within. You can then use the import button on the manage macros dialog to import these steps.
    SelectAll:
    Copy:
    RemoveTracks:
    NewStereoTrack:
    Paste:
    Pseudo-stereo:df="30" mix="80" source="Left (upper)"
    ExportWav:
  4. The bottom of the dialog has an "Apply macro to:" option. If you want to run the macro only for the current project, choose project. Else choose Files which will allow you to automate this process for a large number of files if needed. You can also run the macro for the current project via the Tools menu.
  5. The pseudo-stereo settings in the macro are the default values (as described in the Audacity wiki). These can be tweaked as required. You can also choose to change the ExportWav function to something else if needed.

Hope this helps :)