Allow editing audio in stereo

Flowermanvista

For the uninitiated: What is mono and stereo, and why is this important? Click here to find out!

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Currently, in both offline and online Scratch, the audio editor does not support stereo audio at all. Playing back stereo audio in the editor will result in it playing in mono, and editing audio in any way will result in it being converted to mono*. This is not ideal, as it greatly reduces a sense of “depth” from the audio, and generally, it just won't sound as good, especially with music.

My suggestion is that audio should be able to be edited in stereo. This will not result in any visible changes to the editor interface or experience, it will “just work”. This will also not affect how mono audio is edited.

I can't think of any major downsides to this - editing audio is a pretty trivial task for any device that's powerful enough to run Scratch, and doubling the amount of time needed to edit audio probably wouldn't be all that noticeable.

Although this could potentially exacerbate issues with audio that won't edit due to the audio exceeding the size limit once edited, there have been suggestions to fix that, and, in my eyes, that is out of the scope of this suggestion.

*It's not just a straight mix to mono - instead, it only works with the left channel of audio, which is even worse than if it was a proper mono mix.

Last edited by Flowermanvista (March 11, 2021 16:16:55)

PicoMetrics

Support.

Flowermanvista wrote:
I can't think of any major downsides to this - editing audio is a pretty trivial task for any device that's powerful enough to run Scratch, and doubling the amount of time needed to edit audio probably wouldn't be all that noticeable.

But what is mono and stereo?

eikh2

Probably the way the audio sounds before or after you edit it.

P.S: The SMALLEST edit.

Flowermanvista

PicoMetrics wrote:
Support.
Flowermanvista wrote:
I can't think of any major downsides to this - editing audio is a pretty trivial task for any device that's powerful enough to run Scratch, and doubling the amount of time needed to edit audio probably wouldn't be all that noticeable.

But what is mono and stereo?

Here's a quick explanation - some time later, I'll make up an example project to show why this matters.

Mono audio is when audio has just one “channel”, which plays through both ears. Mono audio sounds lacks “depth”, if you could call it that, and generally doesn't sound good unless the audio was specifically recorded and mixed to sound good in mono.

Stereo audio is when audio has two “channels” - a left channel that plays in the left ear, and a right channel for the right ear. Stereo audio sounds much more “real” - it has more “depth” and is more immersive. (You'll have to excuse all the words in quotes, because it's really hard to explain this - really, the only way to explain it is by listening to it.)

eikh2

Flowermanvista wrote:
PicoMetrics wrote:
Support.
Flowermanvista wrote:
I can't think of any major downsides to this - editing audio is a pretty trivial task for any device that's powerful enough to run Scratch, and doubling the amount of time needed to edit audio probably wouldn't be all that noticeable.

But what is mono and stereo?
Here's a quick explanation - some time later, I'll make up an example project to show why this matters.

Mono audio is when audio has just one “channel”, which plays through both ears. Mono audio sounds lacks “depth”, if you could call it that, and generally doesn't sound good unless the audio was specifically recorded and mixed to sound good in mono.

Stereo audio is when audio has two “channels” - a left channel that plays in the left ear, and a right channel for the right ear. Stereo audio sounds much more “real” - it has more “depth” and is more immersive. (You'll have to excuse all the words in quotes, because it's really hard to explain this - really, the only way to explain it is by listening to it.)

Does this mean that this links to the topic I had made before?

Flowermanvista

eikh2 wrote:
Flowermanvista wrote:
snip

Does this mean that this links to the topic I had made before?

Yes, this is the same thing - although I created this topic in the suggestions because I'm not necessarily sure if this would be considered a “bug”.

Flowermanvista

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eikh2

Still rating this a

[3 v] / 3::operators

bro scratch's servers are d y i n g

eikh2

Still rating this a

[3 v] / 3::operators

bro scratch's servers are d y i n g

Flowermanvista

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eikh2

Pufferfish_Test

Huge support. When making music in an external DAW like GarageBand or BandLab, many music producers add stereo to make it sound better. When scratch removes it, it just doesn't sound right, abd the volume gets too loud as it's all on one channel, resulting in it sounding horrible - from my experience anyway. The only problem I can think of with this is that when you change the pan effect using the block, what would happen to channels with a pan above 100 or below -100? Would it act like a stereo track wgen the paneffect is changed? Would it treat those channels as if they're at 100 or -100? Or would it not play at all? Or would it warp round to the other side? However, I would absolutely love this.

Flowermanvista

Pufferfish_Test wrote:
The only problem I can think of with this is that when you change the pan effect using the block, what would happen to channels with a pan above 100 or below -100? Would it act like a stereo track wgen the paneffect is changed? Would it treat those channels as if they're at 100 or -100? Or would it not play at all? Or would it warp round to the other side?

The pan block doesn't do anything past -100 or 100, for mono or stereo audio.

I also noticed that when the block is used, it temporarily plays the audio in mono, which is disappointing. My proposal is that with stereo audio, the block will act exactly how stereo panning works everywhere else: a negative pan will set the left channel's volume to 100% and the right channel's volume to (100-pan level)%, and so on for the other way. For example, a pan of +25 will set the left channel's volume to 75% and the right channel's volume to 100%.

the2000

Support. This may cause some project size problems for people who don't understand how file sizes work but Scratch has a ton of those already, so whatever

Flowermanvista

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