Hi… This seems like the answer is obvious but, for some reason it just isn’t working and I’m turning to this board for help. I’m new to this so, I’m guessing somewhere in here it is me missing something but, I just can’t find it. I just got an assignment to do a narration, and they want it recorded in STEREO. Knowing Audacity had a STEREO setting on it I said, “No problem!” Now though, with Audacity set to stereo, I’m only getting the Left channel recording. It creates both channels but, the sound is only recording to one. I installed Audacity from the DMG file, and am working with OS 10.6. Any ideas?
Most microphones are mono, hence the reason why you are getting only a single channel recording.
To get a two channel (stereo) track:
1)Record in mono
2) After recording, select the track and make a duplicate copy (I think the Mac shortcut is Command+D, or you can find “Duplicate” in the Edit menu).
3) Click on the name of the upper track and from the drop down menu select “Make Stereo Track”.
Note that this is only “technically” stereo (i.e. it has two audio channels). Of course it is still really “mono” and will sound identical to your original mono recording, but it provides the “stereo file” that has been requested.)
Thanks Steve… Yeah, I know that it is still technically MONO, and am not even sure why the guy is asking for it to be in stereo but, being a new assignment, I don’t want to rock the boat.
I see the solution you’re suggesting and it might be the way to go but, I did have a phone call to tech support for my mic (Samson GTrack) and the tech was able to get Audacity to record both channels at once. I have just been unable to reproduce it here, and really he wasn’t there to trouble shoot Audacity so, I had to move on.
If anyone else has any ideas, they’ll be appreciated but… this from Steve could work just fine.
Was he testing on a Mac computer?
On Windows, it depends on the drivers whether or not stereo is available from a mono source. If he was testing on Windows, then with appropriate settings in the Sounds Control panel, 2 channel recording probably would be available.
Have a look in the computer Sounds settings and see if there is a mono/stereo option there. (I don’t use Mac so I can’t help with details)
An alternative workaround is, record in mono, but before exporting, add an empty stereo track (Tracks menu). Although the stereo track adds nothing to the sound it will force the output to be “stereo”.
Good question. My impression was he was on a Mac but, I never actually verified that. In the Sounds Preferences on MAC OS there is no option for stereo or mono. I’m thinking, unless someone else has a suggestion, that I’m going to go the duplicate track route. Thank you for your time.
I’m not familiar with Mac, but the phenomena of left-channel recordings with USB microphones is well-known on the Windows platform. Especially some cheaper types of USB microphones sometimes seem to have this problem.
In german boards the problem is often discussed concerning internetradio purposes. In this case, maybe here too, a Winamp plugin called “somewhat mono” was helpful. It was enough just to start this plugin without having Winamp always running in the background - but please don’t ask me how this works. Will this work on Mac too?
Give it a try. 
Btw, left-channel only ist NOT mono and two similar tracks l/r are NOT stereo.