# How to determine stereo or mono mode?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [February 12, 2006, 10:23pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890 "2006-02-12T22:23:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Geppetto825](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Geppetto825)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2006, 10:23pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890/1 "2006-02-12T22:23:31Z")
Along the top of Mp3tag, you can sort music by artist/song/bitrate/length, etc. I can not find an option to sort by Stereo or Mono, etc. I have almost all stereo mp3's but a few are mono that I want to replace. So, I need a way to sort and see which are which. Any ideas how to do this? Thanks.
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### Author:  [@dano](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/dano)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2006, 11:01pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890/2 "2006-02-12T23:01:48Z")
Make a new column with the value %\_mode%
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### Author:  [@Geppetto825](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Geppetto825)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2006, 12:22am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890/3 "2006-02-13T00:22:58Z")
Thank you for the help. I know this isn't necessarily related to the product, but most programs usually list the songs are just "stereo" or "mono". When using Mp3tag, it lists "Joint Stereo", "Stereo", "Dual Channel", and "Single Channel". Does anyone happen to know the difference by them all? I know Single Channel refers to mono, but I don't know the difference between the other 3. Thank you.
> [@](#):
>
> Make a new column with the value %\_mode%
>
> \<{POST\_SNAPBACK}\>
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### Author:  [@Geppetto825](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Geppetto825)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2006, 12:25am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890/4 "2006-02-13T00:25:58Z")
I found this info:
Dual channel has 2 mono-channels, meaning each channel is encoded with half the bitrate of the overall bitrate.
Stereo has 2 seperate channels, but the bitrate allocation between those two channels changes accordingly to the amount of information there is in each channel.
Joint stereo has 2 channels, but takes advantage of what is common between the channels, so the compression gain is higher.
So, joint stereo is best, then?
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### Author:  [@Sebastian\_Mares](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/Sebastian_Mares)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2006, 4:52am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890/5 "2006-02-13T04:52:17Z")
> [@](#):
>
> I found this info:
>
> Dual channel has 2 mono-channels, meaning each channel is encoded with half the bitrate of the overall bitrate.
> Stereo has 2 seperate channels, but the bitrate allocation between those two channels changes accordingly to the amount of information there is in each channel.
> Joint stereo has 2 channels, but takes advantage of what is common between the channels, so the compression gain is higher.
>
> So, joint stereo is best, then?
>
> \<{POST\_SNAPBACK}\>
Joint Stereo is best, yes. 🙂
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-determine-stereo-or-mono-mode/2890/6 "2026-02-09T12:19:38Z")