Do some devices have problems with mono?

[wordpress]

Someone has told me that some older devices are unable to properly play mp3s encoded as mono, therefore it's best to publish your podcast in stereo. Is this true?

[WyethDigital]

That's the first I've heard of that. Any idea what older devices they're talking about, or how old is old?

I've listened to lots of podcasts in both stereo and mono, and not had a problem with either, and my podcast listening goes back to the 3rd Gen iPod. Maybe they were confusing stereo vs mono with a bitrate issue?

The advantage of mono is a smaller file size, so if bandwidth is a concern, it's worth consideration. I would recommend mono for talk show or instructional podcasts, but not for music or certain entertainment podcasts because the richer sound you get from a stereo recording is worth it on those.

I would just make sure that your mono podcast is true mono, and not just sound in one channel of a stereo podcast.

[BridgeHands]

Yes, this rings a bell somewhere, or maybe I'm confusing the incompatability issue with the older MP3 playes that don't support VBR http://www.mediamonkey.com/sw/webhelp/noframe/source/mp3%20encoding%20settings.htm
http://www.mp3-faq.org/faq3.html#3.19

If you're a glutton for punishment and love to worry about seemingly harmless setting like EQ, just check out this link: http://www.audiobooksforfree.com/xMP3/default.asp

If it's not one thing that goes wrong, than it's probably two... or more!

Good luck, Michael

[WyethDigital]

Well, I stand corrected on the older mp3 player issue. Of course, the question begs to be answered: How much can you afford to be worried about every conceivable problem? I mean, at some point you just have to be able to put out a show. If someone has an ancient mp3 player, is it really your problem that the show won't play on it? Should you sacrifice your file size for that?

Eric

[Steev]

I had a very new Windows Mobile 2005 device, using Windows Media Player and it had some trouble with mono MP3s. It introduced some weird clicks and pops.

The good news is that nobody ever has to produce a mono MP3 :) If you mixdown to mono, and then mixdown again to stereo, you can encode your dual-mono mix as a joint-stereo MP3 at same bitrate as you would your mono MP3 and it will be the same quality and only nominally (a few Kb) bigger than a mono MP3. And because it's stereo, it won't give any players issues.

If I haven't explained that well enough, I can try again :) It works, I've done it.