Balancing audio for a podcast

Hi everyone,

Apologies for asking what has surely been asked before. I’ve searched the forums and being the rookie that I am, I’m not sure if the answers provided are right for me. I recorded a podcast with one other person, via Skype. When I play back the audio, my vocals are in the left ear, while my co-host is in the right ear. Is there a way to rebalance that so that both vocals appear in both the right and left channels? I listen to many podcasts at work with just one earbud and get all of the audio. I don’t want someone to do the same with my podcast and get frustrated because they’re forced to wear both earbuds. Any help would be appreciated!

What you have is highly desirable because with the voices split, you can apply corrections to one voice (volume corrections, filtering) without messing up the other. People with both voices on one track have no correction or filtering options.

I assume one single stereo track, right? Two blue waves?

Using the drop-down on the left of the track > Split Stereo To Mono.

That will give you two mono tracks which will play at the same time into both ears. You can mute one or the other with the MUTE buttons to the left so you can hear and correct one without the other. When you get the show the way you want it, just File > Export Audio. Audacity will automatically smoosh everything into one sound file. It’s recommended that you export WAV (Microsoft) for archive, and only create an MP3 if you need one for posting. You can re-edit a WAV, but re-editing an MP3 will create sound damage.

Where is the podcast, or where will it be?

Koz

Thanks for the quick reply! The podcast is here: http://www.tumblingsaber.com/tumblingsaber-podcast-episode-2/ (on the off-chance you’re a Star Wars fan that hasn’t seen the movie yet, tread carefully - spoilers abound!)

Thanks for the quick reply!

Was that what you wanted?

Koz

It sounds like it. I won’t have a chance to try your solution until tonight but it sounds like it will do the trick! Again, many thanks! :slight_smile:

You can also fade one voice slightly to one side and the other to the other, but that’s generally a bad idea because if you’re wearing earphones, it makes you want to whip your head back and forth. Even in fancy surround-sound entertainment systems, most of the actor dialog is dead center.

Koz