Audacity Forum

I followed the Audacity Voice Removal tutorial but after i did it, i played around with the speaker balance on one of the tracks. Now my Right speaker has a lower volume than the Left one and cannot seem to fix it. I have tried the sound properties but the balance page says that all the speakers are equal. I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate.

<<<Now my Right speaker has a lower volume than the Left one and cannot seem to fix>>>

Missing one sentence. "No matter what I play whether Audacity is open or not."

If you play something in Windows Media or play a commercial from the internet, is it still off balance?

Koz

yep. All the audio is off balance even if Audacity is open or not.

As suggested by kozikowski, this is not an Audacity problem.

First check your Windows mixer settings.

Try connecting headphones to your soundcard instead of your speakers
- if the problem is fixed then the fault lies with your speakers/amplifier or leads.
- if the problem persists then the fault lies with your computer/soundcard.

After you've done that, post your findings here and we can take it from there.

Done all that, since my computeris a laptop, the headphone ports are connected to the soundcards. And also the problem was caused right after I used the voice removal techniqe in Audacity. And I also have checked the sound settings and they are at their normal settings.

So do you get the same problem with headphones and speakers?
Are you talking about external speakers, or speakers in the laptop?

I don't have external speakers, the same problem occurs with the headphones as well as the built in speakers.

We should probably change direction here a little bit.

Pull down the "Left-Right" test track from here:

http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html

And play it on your system. It's a plain Windows WAV file and should play anywhere.

This is good when you start having basic machine problems. Plug your headphones in when you listen. Cut 1 is Left, cut 2 is Right, cut 3 is Mono, and cut 4 is intentionally phase damaged and should sound really freaky.

Koz

the right voice is very soft compared to the left one and also when it is supposed to be in the center, it sounds like he is in the left. About the freaky stuff, i couldn't hear any....

<<<About the freaky stuff, i couldn't hear any....>>>

You won't. You need both channels working correctly for the fourth cut to sound like it's coming from behind you. That's part of how this test works. I get the list of what didn't work and then try to divine what happened.

Did you open this clip up in Windows Media? Audacity? Both?

When you turn the machine on, does the opening Windows Sound come from the middle?

The Windows sound panels are a nightmare of controls and recursive pathways. On the older Windows machines, each service had a volume control and a balance control and if you activated them all, there were about fifteen of them in the setup panel. Playback Microphone, Record Microphone, Playback Line-In.....etc.

This is getting seriously out of my world, but this is a web site that describes Vista sound services:

http://www.libinst.com/windows_soundcar ... n_vist.htm

...and this is a segment from that posting:

On the "Levels" tab, you will find a slider for the overall (Master) control of the playback function, and a "balance" button. This is the only place where "balance" can be adjusted, so make sure both left and right channels have the same setting!

Koz