[Help] missing channel in an official release!

[spoRv]

That's incredible, never happened before... the Italian multichannel track of Creep (2004) misses the front left channel! It's the same for two different editions in the AC-3 version, and also in DTS present in just one of them...

I didn't want to copy&past the front right channel "as is", so as temporary solution, I mixed both front right and center channel, to get something a bit different - I'm aware that's not THE solution, but still *a bit* better than plain copy of FR.

What I'd like to achieve is this: compare the English right channel with the Italian one; where they sound (more or less) the same, it means no voice are there; for those segments, the related part of the left channel would be used to replace the corresponding (faulty) right channel. This is the best solution IMHO. Still, too lazy to do it manually, so I wonder if there is a way to do that in audacity, or other free softwares.

Thanks!

[Chewtobacca]

I don't think you'll find an automated way of doing this: it's rather unconventional. Why not replace the center channel of the English mix with the corresponding channel from the Italian and see how it sounds?

[deleted user]

Additionally to what Chewtobacca said, I've had this idea for a while in my head now that might be highly experimental, but perhaps yield some results in some cases. That is, to take all the available audio tracks of different languages, and median the shit out of them, so as to almost eliminate all voice, while hopefully preserving music and SFX. Then add any center channel you like.

I've never actually tried this, it might not work, and if it works, it will require specific conditions for it to work. Still, worth a try for this project? You would also need to find a tool that can actually do this (I haven't found one).

[spoRv]

@Chewtobacca: thought the same, but sadly there is A LOT of dialog on both front channels (and it spills over back channels, too! ) so, it's not a feasible solution.

@TomArrow: the same, too... it works so well with video, then probably it *should* work well on audio, too... how, dunno... maybe some audio expert would chime in and put us on the right track (pun intended!)

[Chewtobacca]

In respect of Tom's suggestion, in my experience, there seem to be qualitative differences in how foreign language tracks (even on the same disc) are mixed, so while the approach sounds promising, it's likely to be unworkable in practice.

[deleted user]

In respect of Tom's suggestion, in my experience, there seem to be qualitative differences in how foreign language tracks (even on the same disc) are mixed, so while the approach sounds promising, it's likely to be unworkable in practice.

Yeah I would have suspected that but I think it *might* only be a big problem if this qualitative difference also changed the timing of everything - which it probably does lol - still I'd be curious to at least hear the results