Recording in one channel

[Motorpsycho]

there is simply no way that Audacity can provide support to directly interface with the audio hardware for hundreds of different sound cards on multiple operating systems

I don´t get the point. Audacity can record stereo from any sound card without supporting any direct interface to hundreds of different sound cards. It records the stereo signal with seperated left and right channels into one track. I am really not into internal audio data structures, but Audacity could simply drop the unnecessary channel internally (as it could be done with the "split track" command and deleting the surplus track manually) and simply ignore the unwanted channel. So i´d suggest: record stereo on a stereo interface and let the program do the rest (keep it stereo, keep only mono left, mono right or make a mono mix) but don´t let the user do this manually.

[jaypat]

Thanks to everyone for their help. Steve The Fiddle, I'm looking at your notes, and under "tracks" in my system, there is a "split to mono", but
it's shaded light and I can't activate it. Any suggestions?

JP

[steve]

Thanks to everyone for their help. Steve The Fiddle, I'm looking at your notes, and under "tracks" in my system, there is a "split to mono", but
it's shaded light and I can't activate it. Any suggestions?

JP

Well (obviously) it must be a stereo track. I'm not sure what else can make it unavailable. Is this a one-off occurrence, or is it always like that?
Which version of Audacity are you using?