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I've got some audio that was recorded mono but converted to pseudo stereo by inverting the audio and copying it to a second channel.

I'm trying to reverse the process and wondering if I should just delete one channel

Are there any downsides to having a single channel (mono) audio?
(Assuming that the original audio was recorded as a single channel) For example, if someone has their left or right speaker turned off/down would that cause the audio to not be heard?

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  • It is worth mentioning that making a mono track "stereo" by inverting the channel and sending it to the other speaker is bad as this will result in phasing issues and should be avoided. Basically, if a listener is perfectly equidistant from both speakers they should hear nothing as they would cancel each other out. If they are not, then you can get weird interference issues as well. Just doubling the mono channel to L and R channels will normally work fine. In either case, discarding one is fine in most cases.
    – AJ Henderson ♦
    Dec 23, 2013 at 15:36

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If the second channel is really an inversion of the first, deleting it would be an improvement, because as it is the two will cancel out and nothing will be heard in a mono configuration (when the channels are summed).

If you have any way of checking correlation, 100% negative correlation would indicate true inversion.

A mono signal will generally be heard equally in both stereo channels, so there's no danger of one side 'going dark'. But a better plan is to replicate the mono signal in both stereo channels, so it will be compatible with most modern audio setups.

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