Audacity Forum

Hi-

When I record, the right channel is noticbly weaker than the left. It's there (I've set the recording preference to stereo), but the right channel is weak and the resultant recording is unbalnaced. When I play a commercially mixed MP3 track, both channels show up fine. Have scanned the other posts, but haven't found this issue. I'm using a Samson QiU mic through USB, with an older Santa Cruz sound card. I think I've got all the preferences set up correctly. Many thanks for the help.

That's a little rough. Many USB microphones automatically arrive either full stereo or aggressively mono depending on software drivers (or lack of them). Did the microphone come with a software package and did you load it? Is there a microphone control panel somewhere?

I guess you could dig in the Windows Control Panel and see if the microphone is listed there. See if there isn't a left-to-right fader in there. I really doubt it, but stranger things have happened.

My nice but ordinary Logitech USB desk microphone will not work unless Audacity is set to Mono.

Koz

You may be able to correct for this post-capture by using the Normalize effect.

Audacity's Normalize works a little differently from most other implementations - it actually normalizes each stereo channel separately - so the net result is to balance the stereo channels.

WC

Thanks for the quick replies. I'll give it a go and let you know what happens....