It can be highly beneficial to a podcast to render conversation in stereo, to help the listener to differentiate speakers even with similar voices. But there are quite some issues that need to be taken into consideration: For example, listening experience, one-channel and mono reproduction, compression and audio quality. There is a German version of this text on https://sendegate.de/t/ospac-mono-stereo-raeumlich-multichannel/2933 .
In mono mode, ospac renders all signals into a one channel signal.
ospac --mono {1,2,3,4,5}.wav --voice {5,4,3,2,1}.wav \
--output mono-test.wav
ospac --raw mono-test.wav --plot mono-test.ppm
Please be aware, that ospac does the mono mix-down without scaling, thus you must use --factor or --normalize when including stereo signals using --mix or --raw.
The standard stereo mode renders the audio signals with different intensity settings on the two stereo channels. In the default setting (0.9 or 1.1), the left-most channel has a intensity boost of 10% on the left and 10% damping on the right channel. The right-most channel is treated accordingly and all other channels are evenly distributed in between.
ospac {1,2,3,4,5}.wav --voice {5,4,3,2,1}.wav \
--output stereo-test.wav
ospac --raw stereo-test.wav --plot stereo-test.ppm
Listen to the standard stereo rendering
You can increase the stereo effect by changing the --set-stereo-level setting:
ospac --set-stereo-level 0.25 \
{1,2,3,4,5}.wav --voice {5,4,3,2,1}.wav \
--output stereo-strong.wav
ospac --raw stereo-strong.wav --plot stereo-strong.ppm
Listen to the strong stereo rendering
You may also disable the stereo effect by setting the stereo level to 1 and generate a two-channel mono signal:
ospac --set-stereo-level 1 \
{1,2,3,4,5}.wav --voice {5,4,3,2,1}.wav \
--output stereo-mono-test.wav
ospac --raw stereo-mono-test.wav --plot stereo-mono-test.ppm
Listen to the mono stereo rendering
This mode can be used to have a full stereo intro while the actual conversation should be in mono.
Inter-aural differences in intensity are only one hint for spatial localization of speakers. Another hint are inter-aural time delays that occur since sound travels with about 330m/s in air and the two ears are separated by about 0.22m. The standard setting for the spatial mode are 0.09m sound distance in addition the the standard stereo intensity setting of 0.9:
ospac --spatial {1,2,3,4,5}.wav --voice {5,4,3,2,1}.wav \
--output spatial-test.wav
ospac --raw spatial-test.wav --plot spatial-test.ppm
Listen to the standard spatial rendering
You can also increase the interaural time delay to the maximum delay representing 0.2m for sounds coming directly from the sides:
ospac --spatial --set-stereo-spatial 0.2 \
{1,2,3,4,5}.wav --voice {5,4,3,2,1}.wav \
--output spatial-strong.wav
ospac --raw spatial-strong.wav --plot spatial-strong.ppm
Listen to the standard spatial rendering
Ospac also supports a multi-channel mode where no rendering takes place and results in as many channels as they were provided. This mode is useful for just using the crosstalk gate or filter and then rely on a another audio tool for the actual stereo or mono rendering.
ospac --multi \
{1,2,3,4,5}.wav --voice {5,4,3,2,1}.wav \
--output multi-test.wav
ospac --raw multi-test.wav --plot multi-test.ppm
While the stereo rendering can be very beneficial for the listener, there are also some down sides that need to be taken into consideration: First of all, strong stereo settings can be very annoying. If someone talks to you from the right, you would simply turn towards this person- the listener cannot do this, and is right to be annoyed. Secondly, you cannot be sure that there are always two speakers available. Many handhelds only have one speaker and either play a mono mono mixdown or just one channel. Also, there might be listeners that can only listen with one ear. Thirdly, the use of stereo rendering decreases the compressibility of the signal, which will lead to a decrease of quality with constant compression rate. This gets even worse if a mono-mixdown occurs of a compressed audio file.
Especially the --spatial mode has problems with mono-mixdowns as you can experience in this mono mixdown of the strong spatial rendering. This is the same effect you experience when listening to the radio which switches from mono reception to stereo reception. Suddenly you hear more high frequencies. They were there before, but were canceled in the mono mixdown.
The following table shows the discussion of the modes:
| Rendering | Mono | Stereo mono | Stereo | Strong stereo | Spatial | Strong spatial |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stereo effect | - | - | + | ++ | ++ | +++ |
| Not annoying | + | + | + | -- | + | -- |
| One channel | ++ | ++ | + | -- | + | + |
| Mono rendering | ++ | ++ | ++ | ++ | - | -- |
| Compression | 43 | 47 | 54 | 60 | 59 | 63 |
The compression rates are in kBit/s with fixed quality setting in lame for above examples.