Digital Bits Technology Column QnA

Question:

I have 2 tape decks with two tapes. On each deck I feed the one Left output and the other Right output to my PC linein sound card. Using Audacity editor, I split the converted output to a left and right track and duplicate each track. I was expecting a stereo output from each of the duplicated track but I got only a mono output.

How would I get a stereo output from each separate Left and Right track?

Answer:

I can think of three possible solutions for this problem.

1) The cabling that runs from your left/right output to your PC input is not stereo, but mono. Some Y-splitter cables split audio into two channels, but they keep a mono audio format. Make sure the cabling you use for Audacity specifically says it’s a stereo cable.

2) In Audacity’s Edit->Preferences menu, check the Recording settings in the “Audio I/O” tab. Make sure “Channels” is set to “2 (Stereo)“.

3) If neither of the above fix your problem, you could always do the following:
    a) Record the left audio track with Audacity. Save this file.
    b) Record the right audio track with Audacity. Save this file.
    c) Use Audacity to combine the files into a single file with two (stereo) audio tracks. While it’s a little more work, and takes twice the recording time, this will give the result you’re after.

Other articles related to this topic:

• Stereo Audacity recording keeps appearing as mono
• Audacity not recording all audio
• Audacity doesn’t record when it worked correctly before
• CD conversion is one big track instead of multiple individual tracks
• Echo when recording cassette in Audacity