Ableton Forum

Hi there

It's been a while that I'm mixing a podcast from the same guy, and from time to time he sends me "false" stereo files : what I mean is that the content is mono, but the file is stereo. Because it is wasting a lot of ressources (and the disk space is now very costy), I started to searched for some solutions in order to extract one channel without being obliged to export the file and add dithering noise.

As an experiment, I tried recently to export the file directly from Ableton Live without using dithering, and wanted to check the difference with the source.
The source was a 44kHz/16-bit stereo file (the guy can't record in 24-bit) so I placed the file in a Live's track, did drop an instance of Utility after it, chose only the left channel, and exported the result in mono, 16-bit, without dithering.

To my surprise, the result nulls perfectly with with the source !!!!

It's like if Ableton Live were clever, were seeing that I didn't touch the source file in any way and were just extracting the left side of the file without any processing (and thus, without any dithering or quantization noise).

I'm quite amazed !

I tried another experiment : I did a very tiny volume automation on a small part of the file with Utility. When exporting without dithering in 16-bit, the file nulls perfectly everywhere except the place that was automated (where you can hear some quantization noise).
Again, a very clever behavior I was absolutely not expecting.

I wanted to share this with the good folks on this forum, first to tell them it's possible, and second to discuss how such a wonderful and amazing thing is possible.
I would be curious to understand how Live is actually not processing a file when exporting just the left channel...

You didn't change the resolution nor add any dithering, so there's no reason to expect any difference.

[jur] wrote: ↑

Mon Jun 29, 2026 11:41 pm

You didn't change the resolution nor add any dithering, so there's no reason to expect any difference.

I was thinking that anytime something is exported, even if there's no modification, it's processed by Live in some way, so you need to dither or accept quantization noise if not exported to 32-bit.
It was my belief during all these years !

And there are situations where it's actually the case : for exemple if you take 2 mono audio clips that are left and right of the same instrument. You put them in Live on 2 different tracks, set the panner to complete left for the left mono clip, and complete right for the right mono clip, then export both clips in order to get the stereo result. There is quantization noise.
Even if theoretically, the stereo export is exactly the same as the addition of the two mono files.

So why using Utility in order to let only the left or the right side be exported should lead to no quantization noise ? It's also processed !