Simulate stereo with mono - removing static?

[nhwinni]

I'm hoping someone can help please.

I recorded a concert last night on my Alesis disk recorder. Stereo channel. Small vocal choir with violin/viola/cello.

During a piece, one of the techs walked by the patch panel and brushed against a patch cable, sending it waving in the breeze. It was a bad patch cable and created static on my Right channel while recording. Left channel is fine.

I'm mastering in ProTools. I need to get rid of the 15-second static.
One thought I had was to take the Left channel (good) audio for those 15 seconds, and duplicate it on to the Right channel. I've done that. But I don't know how to blend the sound. During playback, you can clearly tell when you transition from true stereo, to 2-channel mono, back to stereo.

My question is how can I make this section "sound like" stereo, and ease the transition to & from the true stereo (before and after the static episode).

The good news is the mics were placed reasonably close together (5-6') so there isn't a lot of width in the stereo signal. It's more like a "depth" issue.

Can someone please offer a solution? I'm using LE for Windows, with the basic digi plugins / ignition pack.

Thank you
- Chris

[3JDamon]

You'll never get it to sound realistic, at best it won't be obvious as background music.

But if you still want to take a shot at it, my best success was to use delays on various frequency bands to shift the image one way or the other, then add some early reflections reverb to smear it a bit so the manipulations are less evident.

First you have to determine which frequencies best belong where by analyzing the unharmed stereo content. Then use EQ's to isolate key frequency ranges on separate audio tracks (not aux inputs) all panned hard right, and nudge them slightly ahead to move them right and slightly late to move them left, play around with delay times and automate volume levels until you've done all you can, then add the early reflections to taste. You should do it for 10 seconds on either side of the problem section for a slow cross-fade or else the transition will stand out more than the patched region.

The Digirack EQ is suitable for the job, but D-Verb doesn't offer early reflections, you'll need something else like Waves TrueVerb, or better yet a convolution reverb like Waves IR-1 or TL Space (not necessary for reflections, but they're better for other purposes).