alsa - averaging stereo to mono for speaker output
 

The right speakers on my laptop has failed, so now it crackles and pops when in use. I can mute just that one speaker using alsamixer, but that just give me half stereo. What I want to do is have it so that when sound is playing from the speakers both channels are averaged then played as mono through each speaker.

I find the alsa documentation to be near incomprehensible and all I have figured out so far is that .asoundrc might need "pcm.front" (my speakers) to have a "route_policy average" (to mix both channels). Other than that I haven't a clue.

Any help is greatly appreciated and if more information is needed please let me know.