Best practices for Stereo-to-Mono mixdown

Question

Hi everybody,

Though I try to record or synthesize most of my assets, sometimes I just need to grab items from libraries out there. In most of those cases, the original files are stereo, but I generally need to assign them to game objects that are single specific audio sources. Before I import the assets to Wwise, I normally do the layering and production work in my DAW, but I get some harsh phasing and aliasing issues when doing a simple mono-mixdown. I understand I'll lose the depth and richness of the stereo image, but I wanted to know if you can recommend a healthier, less harmful way of converting a stereo original audio file to mono.

I love the Wwise downmix conversion algorithm, but I need to do all the layering and sound design work in my DAW first.

Thank you so much in advance!

b.

Answer 1

If you're getting phase issues when downmixing stereos, then the issues are at the stereo source I suspect and no matter how you do it it will add up to same result if its a straight sum. If it's mission critical, you may get better results by splitting the files into two monos and time aligning the L & R in your DAW. A few ms either direction can help dramatically if its a static offset.

You can then just re bounce out to a new mono.