Audacity Forum

i have noticed that when i started the monitor,for recording. that the left side was the only one that is moving.I do believe
that i recorded it in mono.that is the only way i could get good reception.will Audacity change it over to stereo? I'm taping
off a stereo cassette deck.when i recorded the cassette,the deck was hooked to a receiver.thanks

That's a series of interlocking problems.

FM. Yes, if you have marginal radio reception, dropping stereo on the receiver will give you a much cleaner, clearer signal. I do that all the time.

When you drop stereo on an FM receiver, they provide mono on both left and right connections. Officially two track mono. They don't drop one side or the other.

Audacity used to come out of First Birthday in mono. I don't know if it still does that. You might check in Audacity Preferences.

You didn't say you were using a Laptop PC. You are, right? They tend to have very sensitive mono microphone connections and not high level stereo line connections. You get stereo line connections on large Deskside PCs and Macs, not PC laptops.

So that's probably why the show is in mono. If you hear crunchy sound or volume that changes at the wrong times, that could be caused by the microphone connection, too. You are really overloading it. Some people get away with that, some don't.

Since you're using Audacity 1.3, you can slosh back and forth between two-track mono and mono whenever you wish. You'll never get the Stereo back. If you're counting on being able to listen to the violins on the left and French Horns on the right, that effect died when you switched the FM receiver to mono.

Some Music CD authoring programs need a two-track signal to work right. If I apply a "real" mono signal -- one track -- to my Veritas software, it will produce a very strange Music CD. It will not "know" what to do.

Koz

Thanks for your reply;
so i should be getting a left and right channels, two tracks,showing up on the meter although my recording was taped in mono.
what is first birthday in mono? I'am using a desktop,plugging into the line in connection.
i don't hear crunchy or volume sounds.audio is clear.(I just hear the audio out of the left speaker, hooked to the desk top)
nothing out of the right.what do you mean by over loading it?
if i record,with the meter only showing audio on one side(left or right).the sound from my finished product,a CD.will only be
heard out of one speaker! does that sound right! I have some other cassettes,that i recorded off another stand alone player-
recorder,in stereo.what if only one meter registers the audio?can i trouble shout that way?
one other thing;my stereo cassette deck,has a left and right meter.both of them were lit when recording.I can adjust the
level.

dreeser wrote:so i should be getting a left and right channels, two tracks,showing up on the meter although my recording was taped in mono.
what is first birthday in mono?

Yup two channels is what you want - "First birthday ...." is merely Koz' roundabout/shorthand way of saying that when you first install Audacity then the dfault setting is 1-channel i.e. mono - not what most folks want these days (though some do for various reasons ...)

WC