Audacity Forum

Recorded a track from keyboard to Audacity using line out on keyboard to mic in on Mac. Got a stereo track but only recorded on one side (left). Added second track - again only on one side (left). Mixed the two. Can I copy the left track and duplicate on the right to get double mono? If not I'll have to re-record both tracks again to a mono input.

Click on a track, then from the track drop down menu http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Track_Drop-Down_Menu select Split Stereo to Mono. Do this for both tracks.You can then delete the empty tracks, leaving two mono tracks. If you leave them like that (two mono tracks) you can pan them left and right. There is no advantage to duplicating resulting mono tracks then combining them into stereo tracks, but you can do that if you want.

To make a stereo track from the top mono track
- select the top track
- from the Edit menu select Duplicate: the duplicate will appear as the third track
- drag the third track (by dragging in a clear space in the Track Control Panel http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audio_Tracks ) under the first track
- from the track drop down menu in the top track, select "Make Stereo Track"
- repeat for the second track

tonycrimlisk wrote:Recorded a track from keyboard to Audacity using line out on keyboard to mic in on Mac.

I doubt that your Mac has a microphone input. Since the recording worked without distortion, you must have used the line input. The cable you are using is probably a mono cable. See here for how to identify stereo and mono cables http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Tuto ... _Recording . To record mono tracks in the future, go to Audacity (menu) > Preferences, the Devices section, then select "1 (mono) from the Recording Channels drop down menu http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Devices_Preferences . That link is for the 1.3.x preferences. In 1.2.x go to the "Audio I/O" tab.

I strongly recommend upgrading to 1.3.12 http://audacityteam.org/download/beta_mac

-- Bill

Bill: Very many thanks for a very full response. Quite right I used the line i/p on the Mac but it was a stereo cable and mini jack. Presumably the line i/p on the back is mono? I'd tried splitting but it didn't work - suspect I have an out-of-date Audacity (1.2.6) I'll upgrade. Again thanks.

Tony

The line input on the iMac is stereo. So there may be something amiss with your cable.

Yes, do upgrade to 1.3.12. It's worth it.

tonycrimlisk wrote:I'd tried splitting but it didn't work

In what way did it not work? Splitting a stereo track should result in two mono tracks, one from each channel of the stereo track. In your case one of those tracks would contain silence, and could be safely deleted.

Audacity 1.2.5 doesn't have "split stereo to mono", but it does have "split stereo track".

-- Bill