I am editing a monologue that was recorded on location at very high quality but with only one channel active. Audacity does not seem to be able to allow me to “dupe” this track so that I have identical left and right channel audio.
I tried editing from the existing track into a new “Mono” file, but Audacity won’t allow editing from Stereo into Mono. And I can’t find a way to “shrink” the master track from one channel in a stereo file to Mono.
What am I doing wrong? Is what I am trying to do even possible? I am not interested in complex stereo separation effects, I simply want to have audio coming from left and right simultaneously, and not from only one channel.
Select your mono track by clicking anywhere in the empty space of Track Details panel at its left and then Duplicate it by doing Ctrl+D. This should give you two mono tracks, both of them in “Selected” state. Click the little name bar at the top of the Track Details panel of the upper of the two tracks. Part way down you should see “Make Stereo Track”. Click on this. If this is not working for you, at what point is it not working? You are doing it with playback “Stopped” and not just “Paused” aren’t you?
Thanks to you both, I now have saved as a single track, and my original recording in 2-channel mono which my client can further mess with as wished. I’m feeling like I’m ever-learning more about this wonderful tool, and I suspect that just as I get comfortable with it V. 2 will come out of beta and I’ll have to start all over again. (ain 't it always thus?)
If you are already using v1.3.xx beta of Audacity, you will see almost no change to the user interface. If you are still using v1.2.xx on a modern PC you should seriously think of downloading v1.3.14 beta as it will prove to be more stable.