Hollow and thin.
On speakers, the shared sound partly cancels, so a voice in the middle sounds far away and the bass thins out.
SOLIPSIUM Super resolution audio engine
Free audio tool
Fix a stereo recording that sounds hollow or vanishes in mono.
When one channel is upside down, the two cancel where they share sound. Your browser measures how the channels move together and turns one over. Nothing is uploaded.
Drop a recording here
Your browser does the work on this device. Nothing is uploaded.
WAV, MP3, M4A, FLAC, OGG, Opus and more, up to 30 minutes or 200 MB.
Phase
What it means
One channel upside down.
A cable wired the wrong way, a microphone facing the other way or a setting in an editor can flip one channel. Every push becomes a pull.
Gone in mono.
A phone speaker or a mono player adds the channels together, and the shared sound cancels almost to nothing.
Measured as correlation.
From -1, mirror images, through 0, unrelated, to 1, the same. The tool reads it, and how much quieter the recording gets in mono.
How it works
Read first, then turn one over.
Turning a channel over changes nothing else in it: every sample keeps its size and its place.
Open the recording.
The panel shows the correlation and what it means: out of phase at -0.5 or lower, in phase at 0.2 or higher, wide or unrelated in between.
Turn one channel over.
The right, unless you choose the left. Either fixes the cancelling; the sound then comes from the same place.
Save it.
As an MP3 at 192 kbps or a 16-bit WAV, and the result says the new correlation.
Questions
About phase.
The correlation is near 0. Should I turn one over?
No. A wide stereo recording, or two microphones far apart, moves little together. Turning a channel over will not make it fuller.
Can I just make it mono?
Not before it is fixed: added together, the two upside-down channels cancel. Turn one over here first, then use stereo to mono.
A mono recording?
A single channel cannot be out of phase with itself, so the tool has nothing to turn over.
Does it fix a delay between two microphones?
No. It turns a channel over; it does not move it in time.
Is my recording uploaded?
No. Your browser opens the file and does the work on this device; nothing is sent to Solipsium. Checking a recording for noise, hum and clipping is another page: the home page checks it in your browser too.
Free audio tools
Related free tools.
For channels.
- Stereo to mono
Fold stereo to mono once the phase is right.
- Split stereo channels
Save the left and right as two mono files.
- Audio file info
See how many channels a file has.
- Audio spectrum check
See a recording's sound as a picture.
- All free audio tools
Every free tool on one page.
Thin for another reason?
A recording can sound thin because its treble or its voice was lost. Drop it on the home page to check it for muffled sound, noise and clipping, and hear 20 seconds repaired.
Check a recording
The check and the 20-second try need no account.