question for gurus

[sumpm1]

I was always under the assumption that a stereo file did not have 2 distinct left and right channels, that there were not 2 true mono chanels. I mixed 2 songs together, one on the left channel and the other on the right and encoded to mp3. When I listened to it, I adjusted the balance to the left and right and both of the channels were distinct, and you could only here one song when totally faded left or right. So it seems that there are 2 distinct channels, are there?

I also know that there have been karaoke filters that will remove the vocals on a stereo track by removing the center channel, since vocals were usually exactly the same on both channels(vocals are mono, appearing on both channels). So this kind of gives you a third channel for 2 channels. By using a filter like that, is it possible to get 6 channels out of 2 stereo files?

And if not, could you get 6 channels out of 3 stereo files?

[DSPguru]

this should be posted on Audio Encoding forum. mods, please move it.

Originally posted by sumpm1
I was always under the assumption that a stereo file did not have 2 distinct left and right channels, that there were not 2 true mono chanels. I mixed 2 songs together, one on the left channel and the other on the right and encoded to mp3. When I listened to it, I adjusted the balance to the left and right and both of the channels were distinct, and you could only here one song when totally faded left or right. So it seems that there are 2 distinct channels, are there? quoting from the audio faq, q12 :
12) what's the difference between stereo, joint stereo & dual channel ?
dual channel - 2x mono-channels. meaning each channel is encoded with half the bitrate of the overall bitrate.
stereo - 2 seperate channels, but the bitrate allocation between those two channels changes accordingly to the amount of info there is in each channel.
joint stereo - 2 channels, but takes advantage of what is common between the channels, so the compression gain is higher.

I also know that there have been karaoke filters that will remove the vocals on a stereo track by removing the center channel, since vocals were usually exactly the same on both channels(vocals are mono, appearing on both channels). So this kind of gives you a third channel for 2 channels. By using a filter like that, is it possible to get 6 channels out of 2 stereo files?

And if not, could you get 6 channels out of 3 stereo files? yes, but you won't improve compression-gain (ratio between quality to bitrate).