Answers.Body: <p>Here's a solution using the tuneR package in R. The function will map across all your stereo recordings and extract audio from the 1st channel in the listed directory</p>
  <pre><code>library(tuneR)
  library(purrr)
  </code></pre>
  <p>List all stereo .wav files that needs to be converted</p>
  <pre><code>file_paths &lt;- list.files(&quot;E:/test&quot;, pattern = &quot;\\.wav$&quot;, full.names = TRUE)
  </code></pre>
  <p>Creating a function to extract left (channel 1) from a stereo audio file and save it in the working directory</p>
  <pre><code>extract_channel1 &lt;- function(file_path) {
    audio &lt;- readWave(file_path)
    channel_1 &lt;- channel(audio, &quot;left&quot;)
    writeWave(channel_1, paste0(&quot;mono_&quot;, basename(file_path)))
  }
  </code></pre>
  <p>Applying the function to each file path in the list using purrr</p>
  <pre><code>map(file_paths, ~ extract_channel1(.))
  </code></pre>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-02-22T14:51:06.833Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2024-02-22T14:51:06.833Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: indobatrachus
Answers.Body: <p>Is there a way to batch convert them in R - almost certainly yes; Audacity - probably; Raven Pro - not that I'm aware of, but possibly.</p>
  <p>However, I tend to use the free open-source program SoX (<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/</a>) for this task with a little bit of shell scripting.</p>
  <p>There are entire StackExchange sites dedicated to this sort of shell scripting, and I almost certainly adapted code from one of these. I'll leave searching for that as an exercise for the reader and I won't attempt to duplicate here.</p>
  <p>Instead, I will post the recipe and script that I use to do this on the windows command line.</p>
  <ol>
  <li>Install <a href="https://(https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">SoX</a></li>
  <li>Add SoX installation to windows path</li>
  <li>Create a windows batch file (e.g. named splitStereo.bat) with the following content:</li>
  </ol>
  <blockquote>
  <pre><code>for %%n in (*.wav) do (
  sox %%n -c 1 %%n_left.wav remix 1
  sox %%n -c 2 %%n_right.wav remix 2)
  PAUSE
  </code></pre>
  </blockquote>
  <ol start="4">
  <li>Place stereo wav files to split in a folder with this batch file.</li>
  <li>Run the batch file from the file manager.</li>
  </ol>
  <p>This script will batch convert all wav files in a folder splitting channel 1 into files with the suffix with _left.wav and channel 2 into files with the suffix '_right.wav'.</p>
  
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-02-20T11:51:21.807Z
Answers.Text: Scripting is OK, but in my windows11 system the cmd.exe does not work/exist anymore and all is replaced by Powershell and WindowsTerminal (only a sidenote).
Answers.UserDisplayName: WMXZ
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-02-21T07:37:55.173Z
Answers.Text: Thanks for the alternate solution. I think I figured out a way using the tuneR package in R
Answers.UserDisplayName: indobatrachus
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-02-21T21:14:41.963Z
Answers.Text: Glad you found a solution indobatrachus. Would be great if you could post as an answer here.
  
  @WMXZ: I'm still on Windows 10, and surprised to hear that there's no cmd.exe. According to this link https://www.minitool.com/news/open-command-prompt-windows-11.html, it looks like cmd.exe still exists on Windows 11, it's just a little harder to find.
Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian Miller
Answers.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Answers.CreationDate: 2024-02-19T22:20:31.533Z
Answers.LastActivityDate: 2024-02-19T22:20:31.533Z
Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian Miller
Body: <p>I have multiple stereo .wav recordings which I want to convert into mono files for further analysis. Is there a way in RavenPro/R/Audacity to batch convert them to mono sound files (channel 1 or channel 2)?</p>
  
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2024-02-20T07:44:37.767Z
Comments.Text: What is special to "further analysis" that inhibits you to read stereo but process selected channel?
Comments.UserDisplayName: WMXZ
Comments.ContentLicense: CC BY-SA 4.0
Comments.CreationDate: 2024-02-20T10:22:38.527Z
Comments.Text: Hi, I'm a bit confused about reading and processing stereo audio files directly (for example, creating annotations in one channel in a stereo audio file as a training data for a ML model)
Comments.UserDisplayName: indobatrachus
Tags: <r><pam><raven>
Title: How to convert stereo audio files to mono?
ThreadText: # How to convert stereo audio files to mono?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2024-02-19)
  
  I have multiple stereo .wav recordings which I want to convert into mono files for further analysis. Is there a way in RavenPro/R/Audacity to batch convert them to mono sound files (channel 1 or channel 2)?
  
  **Tags:** r, pam, raven
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: What is special to "further analysis" that inhibits you to read stereo but process selected channel?  
  > **username_0**: Hi, I'm a bit confused about reading and processing stereo audio files directly (for example, creating annotations in one channel in a stereo audio file as a training data for a ML model)  
  
  ---
  
  ## 2 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_0 on 2024-02-22. Score: 3 | Accepted answer
  
  Here's a solution using the tuneR package in R. The function will map across all your stereo recordings and extract audio from the 1st channel in the listed directory
  library(tuneR)
  library(purrr)
  
  List all stereo .wav files that needs to be converted
  file_paths <- list.files("E:/test", pattern = "\\.wav$", full.names = TRUE)
  
  Creating a function to extract left (channel 1) from a stereo audio file and save it in the working directory
  extract_channel1 <- function(file_path) {
    audio <- readWave(file_path)
    channel_1 <- channel(audio, "left")
    writeWave(channel_1, paste0("mono_", basename(file_path)))
  }
  
  Applying the function to each file path in the list using purrr
  map(file_paths, ~ extract_channel1(.))
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2024-02-19. Score: 4
  
  Is there a way to batch convert them in R - almost certainly yes; Audacity - probably; Raven Pro - not that I'm aware of, but possibly.
  However, I tend to use the free open-source program SoX (https://sourceforge.net/projects/sox/) for this task with a little bit of shell scripting.
  There are entire StackExchange sites dedicated to this sort of shell scripting, and I almost certainly adapted code from one of these. I'll leave searching for that as an exercise for the reader and I won't attempt to duplicate here.
  Instead, I will post the recipe and script that I use to do this on the windows command line.
  
  Install SoX
  Add SoX installation to windows path
  Create a windows batch file (e.g. named splitStereo.bat) with the following content:
  
  
  for %%n in (*.wav) do (
  sox %%n -c 1 %%n_left.wav remix 1
  sox %%n -c 2 %%n_right.wav remix 2)
  PAUSE
  
  
  
  Place stereo wav files to split in a folder with this batch file.
  Run the batch file from the file manager.
  
  This script will batch convert all wav files in a folder splitting channel 1 into files with the suffix with _left.wav and channel 2 into files with the suffix '_right.wav'.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_1**: Scripting is OK, but in my windows11 system the cmd.exe does not work/exist anymore and all is replaced by Powershell and WindowsTerminal (only a sidenote).  
  > **username_0**: Thanks for the alternate solution. I think I figured out a way using the tuneR package in R  
  > **username_2**: Glad you found a solution username_0. Would be great if you could post as an answer here.  @username_1: I'm still on Windows 10, and surprised to hear that there's no cmd.exe. According to this link https://www.minitool.com/news/open-command-prompt-windows-11.html, it looks like cmd.exe still exists on Windows 11, it's just a little harder to find.  
  
  ---
  
  