How to have equal stereo sound

[Astro-Xana]

When creating remixes, I record a whole bunch of things and apply some effects. But it turns out that all my portions of audio end up with unequal stereo sound in which some portions of audio sound richer and others sound muffled. The rich ones would have the most difference in waveforms in both the left and right channels and the ones that are more muffled would have less difference in waveforms. Therefore, how would I make them the same in terms of stereo sound?

[steve]

You may have your speakers wired incorrectly.
Each speaker has 2 wires - they may be marked red and black. You can think of it as +ve and -ve (though that's not completely accurate). It is important that the +ve and -ve of each speaker is wired the same way round as on the other speaker, otherwise the sound will become more muffled as the stereo difference becomes less.

[Astro-Xana]

Actually, I'm using sony dynamic stereo headphones mdr-v150 in creating my remixes. And if I were to apply more effects on one portion of audio (which will result in that portion of audio having more difference in waveforms in both the left and right channels), it would result in that portion of audio having more stereo sound than the other portions of audio that don't have as many effects applied to them. And I'm wondering how to have these other portions of audio to have the same stereo sound without applying effects on them.

[steve]

And I'm wondering how to have these other portions of audio to have the same stereo sound without applying effects on them.

That's a bit of a contradiction. If you increase the stereo spread, then that is an "effect". I guess what you mean is that you want to increase the stereo spread without adding any other effects that you used on other parts of the mix.

I don't know of any plug-ins for doing this, but it can be done manually:
(In this example, the numbers are made up - depending on the kind of music you may need to adjust the numbers)

• Split the stereo track (from the drop down menu when you click on the track name)
  Make 2 duplicate copies of the left and right channels. (you now have six tracks in all)
  Band pass filter the duplicate copies so that you have a mid/low band and a high/mid band for both left and right (use low pass and high pass filters to create the band pass - suitable frequency ranges will most likely be in the region of 300-800Hz and 1.5-4kHz).
  Delay the low frequency filtered tracks by about 30ms and the high frequency bands by about 20ms.
  Now change the left channels that you have filtered and delayed to right channel, and change the right channel to left.
  Use the volume slider of these tracks to reduce the level by around 18dB

A much easier way would be to narrow the stereo separation of the "wide" effects parts:

• Split the stereo track
  Set both tracks to mono
  Use the pan sliders to make the required stereo width.

One thing that I am wondering, is why yo have this problem in the first place.
A good way to use effects in Audacity, is to use them on duplicate tracks (Ctrl+D to make a duplicate of the selected region). When you apply your effect, make it 100% "wet" (all effect and no original sound). Then use the volume sliders to adjust the levels of the original track and the duplicate track to create the required wet/dry mix. There is a more complete description of this approach given here (using the GVerb effect) http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... x_together

When applying effects this way, you have complete control over the stereo width by adjusting the stereo width of the effect, without damaging the stereo spread of the original material.

If you are wanting to do advanced processing like this, you should be using Audacity 1.3.x rather than 1.2.x