Hi everyone, I searched through google and these forums to figure this out but it seems to be a strange problem.
I am making audio files for a psychology experiment and we need to be playing one audio file into the left channel and separate audio file into the right channel. While I did figure out how to do this (create two mono files, select one to play through left and one to play through right, merge into new track), however, there is this faint overlap where the person with the right headphone can still hear the left audio. I would like to eliminate this “overlap” entirely, but it seems like there is no way.
If anyone has any suggestions that would be great.
Last time that happened to me, someone had left “Cathedral Effects” running in Windows. I couldn’t get total channel isolation no matter what I did and the machine would not pass quality control like that.
Sound familiar?
Dig around in Windows Sound Control Panels and see what you find. Search for Windows Playback Effects. I’m not a Windows elf. If you need more Windows help, we should wait for one of them.
Have you considered the headphone amplifier maybe doesn’t have perfect channel separation?
I’d expect a loud left channel to be noticeable in the right channel as “normal” on most gear. On professional gear, it’s not unusual to see -110 dB channel separation, but on a typical laptop headphones out, this could be up to -40 dB. Say your sound is at 80 dB, that will result in 40 dB on the other channel, which is clearly audible in a quit environment, especially with headphones.
The poster did not say what version of Windows (or Audacity) they had.
For Windows Vista and later, right-click over the speaker icon by the system clock, then choose “Playback Devices”. Right-click over the playback device then choose “Properties”. If there are any sound effect or enhancement options they will be on the “Advanced” or “Enhancements” tab.
Otherwise, open the Windows Control Panel and look in the Sound section for the control panel for your sound card.