The VideoLAN Forums

"Come on. The change has been explained already, a number of times on this forum.

If the speakers or the listener require mono downmixing, it makes more sense to force mono in Windows OS audio settings than in VLC."
-Dev

My computer doesn't have mono options. I tried. I looked things up. I just don't. You don't have to cater to one person, that's not the point. It's just incredibly stupid to remove mono and then issues like mine come up.

This is retarded. Why would there not be mono audio settings?
Can this ever be fixed?

But its not only Windows out there, vlc is available on many other platforms too.
Having the OS managing the, lets call it audio-afterprocessing, would mean that a bunch of different os vendors have to implement this and/or an incredible amount of audio-hardware vendors need to adapt their drivers/modules accordingly
So what would our user, who wants a proper stereo to mono downmix, do to reach is goal?
Change his OS? (including the need for all other needed programs to be compatible with the new os)
Change his audio hardware? -> buy new mainboard for worst case
Or use a media handling application that can do the job?

Who are these users that want mono?
hearing impaired or simply people who are uncomfortable with stereo sound.
audiophiles who want to compensate low quality mixes/ fake stereo
different kinds of professionals, for diagnosis purposes or as soon as you do the step to PA of any kind, stereo and other multichannel sound becomes the minorty

mapping only the left or right channel to both of them does not count as mono! its an useful option to have but cannot replace a proper mono-mix
external hardware soulutions that provide acceptable results are too expensive to be bought by this number of affected users, yes sure further developing of the requested feature would produce costs for this product and leaving it to others won't

seems that the built reputation as the swiss army knife of media players istn't important anymore

along with this featute comes an opportunity to offer a universal software solution to turn a unbalanced stereo output (that can be found on almost any device that is capable of audio processing) into a balanced mono output for a fragment of the costs for hardware soulutions...

I'm a music producer and need to audition a mix in true mono on a single monitor so i can see if it sounds okay. There are plenty of people who listen to music on those horrible little external mono speakers for phones these days.

That's reason enough, isn't it? So implement it please. It can't be that difficult.

I have seen three of requests.

The first type asked to restore the mono choice in Audio / Channels. The problem with that: there never was an option for mono downmixing in that menu. There always were dual-mono (i.e. left and right) options, and they are still there.

The second type asked to restore the channel mappings in the Audio / Device menu. This ignores the fact that the "Device" menu is, and always was meant to be the menu to select the output device. Especially nowadays, users actually need to be able to change output device.

And the third type asks to add a new menu. There are no problems with that, except for the fact that nobody actually cares to implement it nor to sponsor somebody to implement it.

So patch or sponsor welcome. Else shutting up welcome.

The biggest issue is that I don't know what people want, between dual-mono, mono, one audio side, or mixed-stereo.

notice: this topic is a duplicate of https://forum.videolan.org/search.php?k ... d%5B0%5D=7.

I have given my best effort to translate all of the requests and suggestions in this topic to a single feature request the developers can work with (hopefully). I hope it covers everyones wishes, or atleast most of your wishes.

For anyone coming back to this topic, please check on this ticket to see if your feature is already underway.
ticket 18559