I created a fix for the problem in Ableton where "bounce in place" is always stereo when you may want mono (example: bouncing vocals tuned with Melodyne)

A common gripe in Ableton is when you bounce in place it'll always bounce as stereo. Which doubles storage, uses more processing power, and just scrunches up your waveform.

The most common reason is since Ableton doesn't support ARA, if you change your vocals in Melodyne or VocAlign, then want to copy/paste your new vocal somewhere else, you need to bounce it. But vocals are almost never stereo.

So I had the idea of using the Ableton Sample Editor feature as a Mono button. Essentially in Settings > Files > Sample Editor, you set your external sample editor as this program. The program is a Python script that uses FFmpeg to drop the 2nd channel (the old file gets sent to recycle bin and the new file is automatically saved). This is the fastest way because Ableton will automatically offline the file for you versus editing externally throws errors that the file is in use.

The result is that sample "Edit" button in Ableton is now a 1 click mono button. It takes about a second, a command window will flash, and you'll have a now mono file in Ableton. It's technically destructive though, so be careful. Ideally the samples referenced are in your project (using "collect all and save") so you're not modifying your sample packs. But once again, main idea here is for recorded vocals in Ableton Live which would be in your project by default.

GitHub link: https://github.com/sn4901/monofy

NOTE:

• No macOS build. I don't have macOS so I can't build or test. And in order to support macOS, sending to macOS's Trash needs to be programmed into the script. Someone can feel free to fork or PR for it (I'm pretty novice at using GitHub, bare with me).
• Requires FFmpeg which has to be downloaded elsewhere (info in the README).
• An LLM was used when making it, so take that for what it's worth and as always, use any software at your own risk. It works for me and I parsed through all the code line by line myself and made modifications, but you really should check the source code yourself, or wait for other programmers to vouch for it in the comments before using it. Always be skeptical of code online, whether it was 100% human coded, 100% LLM coded, or somewhere in between.

Feel free to look over the code, modify it, offer suggestions, etc. It's a simple script that I'm not planning on maintaining indefinitely but I thought was a good idea. Hopefully some people find it helpful.