[Ardour-Users] Saving disk space

[Alf Haakon Lund]

On 01. okt. 2016 09:53, Gordonjcp wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 01, 2016 at 09:44:29AM +0200, Alf Haakon Lund wrote:
>> Hi list,
>>
>> Currently on Ubuntu Studio 14.04, running Ardour 4.7.0.
>>
>> Ardour keeps audio files as specified in the
>> session/properties/media tab, where I can choose between a number of
>> formats.
>>
>> Now, regardless of the format I'm telling Ardour to use, if I record
>> a file with my handheld recorder to a stereo WAV-file and imports it
>> to a session, Ardour will split the file in two (left and right),
>> each the same size as the original stereo file - thus requiring
>> double the space on my disk.
>>
>> Why are mono files 'bigger than' stereo files, and is there a way to
>> make Ardour work with stereo files instead?
>>
>
> Is it splitting it into two stereo files?

No, the file is split to two mono files and accordingly there's an 'L' 
or 'R' appended to the file name.

> If it splits it into two mono files at the same bitrate, it should be more-or-less the same size overall.
>
> Are you resampling to a higher bitrate?

Well, indeed! The recording is 16-bit PCM while Ardour says it's working 
with 32-bit floating point. Telling Ardour to work with 16-bit integer 
reduces file size to half. Thank you for sorting that out for me.

I guess for my main use of Ardour to edit stuff for airing on radio, the 
extra hifi bits doesn't make much sense anyway.

Best,
Al F