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This question has been asked in the Audacity forum and elsewhere, but it has never really been answered for what I believe "subtract" means. My experience with the Audacity form has led me to believe that I will see a much better answer here.

The instructions other sites give are to split the stereo tracks, which I have done; then select one track and use Effects -> Invert on one track, which I have also done.

At this point, the instructions are to re-combine the tracks to stereo, and then mix down. This is where things go wrong: when I recombine the tracks the selection on the track select tab does not allow combining the tracks to mono: that selection is greyed out. On the main menu, under "Tracks -> Mix" the "Mix Stereo down to Mono" option is greyed out. It is only possible to "mix and render" into the same or another stereo set of tracks, which does not do what I would call a 'subtraction'. The tracks that remain sound just like they did before.

What I want, and what I think other people want, is a 'mathematical' subtraction of one track from the other so that the differences remain in one single track.

Does anyone know if this can really be done in Audacity? If so, could you please post the complete instructions on how to do it? Instructions like "now mix the tracks" aren't specific enough: in this forum, other people in the future will be looking for answers, and step by step instructions are what most people will need.

Thanks.

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  • When you split the audio tracks, are you getting a stereo left and a stereo right track, or two mono tracks?
    – user10489
    Commented May 12 at 11:42
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    What exactly are you trying to achieve with this technique? Probably best to ask about the result you want, not the method. I seem to remember reading something about doing this for balanced audio signals, but I think it was based on a misconception of how they work.
    – benwiggy
    Commented May 12 at 17:13
  • Splitting yields two mono tracks. I'm taking the default action of splitting a stereo track, which is what multiple articles say is the first step. What I want to accomplish is a reduction of background noise: there are many cases where the background is the same in both channels but other sounds are not: inverting a channel and subtracting it will remove or reduce the background leaving only what is different. Some other people want to use this technique to remove a voice and leave the background.
    – Bart Lederman
    Commented May 13 at 10:33

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