Simple Recording Help

[Eminence]

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Hello!

I have been having some troubles recording with the your program audacity, and i love it <3
but the one thing that is REALLY stopping me from making music everyday is when i record vocals it only comes out of one ear :p.. i know im a noob.. lol but i just can not figure it out..

Details.
This is the pre-amp i use http://vengineers.net/store/components/ ... 66f7c9.jpg
i have a mic to of course and ill post a photo of it later...


pleaseee helppppp <3 thanks !

[whomper]

you need two mikes if you want to hear in two ears
seriously , one mike records in mono = one channel = one ear.
convert it to stereo to get two ears worth of music.

[Eminence]

dude... are you sure.. i know plenty of ppl that record with one mic.. lol

[steve]

you need two mikes if you want to hear in two ears

Completely incorrect.


If you record in mono you will get the sound from both speakers/headphones, subject to the "pan position".

The most common reason that people get sound out of only one speaker/headphone when recording with one microphone is because they have recorded a stereo track and the microphone has recorded only on one channel (one side) of the stereo pair.

In Audacity 1.2.6, go to;
"Edit menu > Preferences > Audio I/O tab"
Set the number of channels to "1 (mono)"
Record with your (one) microphone. This will create a mono track.
Play it back and the sound will come out equally from both left and right.

-------------------

Pan position:
If you want the sound to come more from one side than the other, there is a "pan position" slider on the left side of each recorded track.

There are a total of 2 sliders on each track. The upper slider is a volume slider (marked "-.....+"). The lower slider is the "Pan position" slider (marked "L....R").
If the pan slider is moved to the left, the sound will come more from the left speaker/headphone, if moved to the right it will come more from the right.

Why you may want to use the pan slider:
Let's say you are recording 2 guitar tracks and one vocal track. If you have 3 people performing live, you would probably have one guitar to the left, one guitar to the right, and the singer in the middle.

With 3 mono tracks, you can move the pan slider on one guitar track a little to the left, the pan slider of the other guitar a little to the right, and leave the vocal in the middle. You can also use the volume sliders to adjust the playback level of each track. When you "mix down" the recording (either using the "Project menu > Quick Mix", or when you Export your finished piece) the tracks will be mixed to stereo and you will hear the instruments "spaced out" in stereo, like in real life.

Words of caution -
It is usually best to avoid panning tracks too far off centre as it can sound very weird.
Take care not to boost the volume of the tracks too much or you will get distortion occuring.

[whomper]

you need two mikes if you want to hear in two ears

Completely incorrect.

That was a bit harsh.
Incomplete yes, totally incorrect no.

In any NORMAL situation/set up you get one mono channel with one mike.

Yes you can do things to get two channels. But that was way beyond the situation implied by the original question and the current skill level of that person imho.

[steve]

You do NOT need two microphones to hear the sound in both ears. Suggesting that you need two microphones to hear sound in both ears is incorrect and misleading.

In any NORMAL situation/set up you get one mono channel with one mike.

Yes you can set up one mono channel with one microphone, and for many users that will be the usual set-up.
Recording a MONO track with such a set-up will produce sound from BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT headphones/speakers.

My tone may have been a bit harsh but it has been repeatedly pointed out to you that when you offer advice that is substantially incorrect and misleading it does not help other users at all. In fact it does quite the opposite.

[Eminence]

Ok, thanks man!

[waxcylinder]

But do note that you can also get stereo microphones too.

I bought a Sony ECM-MS907 http://www.sony.co.uk/product/pam-music/ecm-ms907#null to use with my minidisc recorder some years ago.

I still have it and it works fine recording in stereo with Audacity, fed through the mic input on my external Edirol soundcard.

WC

[kozikowski]

You can have hardware that fogs the issue as well. If I record from the single (clearly mono) microphone in my laptop, I get a stereo track with my voice on both sides. The laptop assumes (usually correctly) that most people don't have mono shows or mono systems and everything in a production should be stereo. So it automatically copies my voice to both sides of a stereo track.

You can do that kind of thing in Audacity, too. Take the mono track you recorded and copy it to both sides of a stereo show.

A trick, by the way, a lot easier to do in Audacity 1.3.12 here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

If, however, I plug one of my mono USB microphones into my computer, they yes, certainly, I'm only going to get one single sound track.

Koz