Abstract: The invention relates to a processing method for reducing channels of a stereophonic signal to obtain a monophonic signal, comprising the following: - application (610, 611), to a current frame of said signal, of two (T1 or T2, T3) channel-reducing processing operations, one of the processing operations using filtering with re-phasing on at least one of the channels of the stereophonic signal and the other processing operation not using filtering with re-phasing, - selection (612) of one of said processing operations to be applied to the current frame, said selection being implemented depending on: — the presence or absence of at least one transient in the stereophonic signal, or — a quality level of the filtering of the stereophonic signal used when implementing the processing operation using filtering of the stereophonic signal. The invention also relates to a processing device for reducing channels implementing the method.