Stereo tracks being split into a separate track for each channel?

[JeffB]

I have been importing stereo tracks into a project & things seem fine but for some reason the stereo channels will suddenly split into separate tracks. This makes alignments much more difficult.

Is there a way to combine them back into stereo tracks?

I am using: Audacity 3.4.2

Thank you.

[DVDdoug]

Make Stereo Track

…Somebody else complained about that. Maybe it’s a new bug?

[JeffB]

Thank you, that will be a huge help to me.

fwiw, this looks like it has been an issue for awhile now. I saw a couple of older posts on here about that happening to people. Here is one of them:

3.4 bug - Why is Audacity splitting stereo tracks into separate tracks for each channel when I move other files in other tracks?

I am using Audacity on a M1 MacBook Air, OS 12.1. I just updated to 3.4. I use Audacity to produce my weekly radio music program. I drag the song files into Audacity and then move them around so each segment is two tracks so the songs can overlap and I can edit the transitions. After updating to 3.4 I am finding that when I move a file from one track to another, Audacity seemingly randomly splits OTHER files in other tracks into separate L and R channel tracks. Sometimes it’s every track, so…

In my own case I had been using Audacity to play music for a Church service for a very small congregation. It’s probably not ideal since the file sizes are larger than other options, but I am not aware of other software that would give me the precision Audacity does. I line the different tracks up in order, end to end with some space between them and when the time comes for a particular piece I can hit the space bar & it plays immediately. When it’s over, I stop it & cue up the next track so it will be ready at the appropriate time.

I tried to make them all fit in a single window without having to scroll up & down & when I tried to make them fit by shrinking their height… boom, the channels split into separate tracks. Or at least I think that’s where it happened. Perhaps it did when I moved tracks up or down to get them in the correct order, or when I moved them left or right to line them up as I wanted.

Anyway, thanks again for the link to that article. It had a link to a more in depth, dedicated article, btw: Splitting and Joining Stereo Tracks - Audacity Manual