Hey guys. I’m a VO artist and record a lot of long form stuff. I’ve been using an old dell running windows 7 home Premium(64) with Audacity 2.0.3. It’s an Intel Core 2 Duo 2Ghz processor, 4GB of RAM. I’m using an MBox2 mini as my interface and Audacity to record. It’s been working flawlessly for the most part for years. I’m upgrading my computer because it’s starting to fail and have tried a couple from Best Buy and both have had the same issues - audio recorded as mono is halved. In the FAQs it says if it happens to set it to stereo and then split it and delete the empty channel. Which does indeed work. However, I do so much recording, it just adds to the time and organization needed to do a good job. I’ve tried a new Dell Inspiron, windows 10 (64bit), Intel Pentium CPU 1.6ghz, 8GB or RAM and an HP running Windows 10 (64), AMD A10 8700P Radeon 6, 1.8ghz, 6GB of RAM. I’m having the same ‘halving’ issue with both. SO…any idea what’s changed? Or ideas on how to get it to record in mono without halving it? Thanks very much for any help anyone can offer.
To be clear, Mbox2 is meant for use with ProTools software. Audacity does not officially support Mbox or DigiDesign devices. If it does largely work, it’s a bonus. 
Your Audacity version is rather old. The current version is 2.1.1: http://audacityteam.org/download/windows although I don’t expect it to help with the “half volume” issue. Are you using 2.0.3 because 2.1.1 does not see your devices on Windows 10?
The FAQ is correct. Record in stereo, split to mono and delete the redundant track. In a future Audacity we may be able to make this easier by implementing recording channel to track allocation.
If you were at some stage able to record in mono (one channel) at full volume, then it was either because you were using Audacity 1.2.x (where mono full volume recording worked more often) or perhaps it is to do with driver version. Presumably you have installed Avid’s drivers that are meant for using Mbox with third-party software? Did you update or downgrade those drivers just before the behaviour changed?
I would not recommend using the now obsolete Audacity 1.2.6 (the last 1.2 version) except as a last resort.
Gale
Thanks for your response, Gale. I was using, and have only ever used, Audacity 2.0.3 because that was the one that was available when I started using Audacity. I haven’t updated it until now, when I’m trying to get my new system up and crankin.’ So it sounds to me like it was a happy coincidence that I had it working that way. With my old set up, I likely already had Pro Tools and it’s drivers loaded up. I then took an Audacity ‘class’ taught by a VO guy here in LA. He helped us tweak it, maybe, and update it with some ‘stuff’. Perhaps that was the magic ingredient that led to my being able to record at full volume in mono. In any case, moving forward it seems like I need to get used to recording in stereo, splitting and then deleting a track. No problem. I love the program. It would be great to be able to do that again in the future if you guys could manage to work some of your magic! Thanks for a great program!