Stereo to mono

[drke]

I record stereo mics through a Mobile Pre USB and then convert to mono. I'm deaf in my R ear and so stereo does not help on playback but I believe that two mics pick up a broader range. Yesterday I upgraded from 1.32 to 1.34. Now when I go to 'Tracks' - 'Stereo to Mono' everything seems to work well until I try to play the mono track - then Audacity crashes. If I don't convert to mono, everything plays perfectly - no crashes and I can do any other effects without problems. If I convert to mono and save the resultant file before trying to play it, it will still crash when I play it but I can restart Audacity and recover the file as saved in mono which then works fine and no longer crashes. I tried deleting and reloading all Audacity files several times but no change. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

DrK

[drke]

A little more information. I have XP MCE SP2. Dell XPS 1210. T7400 2.16 Ghz with 2 GB RAM. Lots of memory left.
I tried deleting all the effects, etc so that there was only the Audacity program - no help. Tried earlier version - no help. Tried turning virus scanner off - no help. Crash occurs with Mobile Pre uninstalled.

[alatham]

I get the same behavior. Recording a stereo track, then highlighting it and clicking Tracks -> Stereo to Mono, then trying to play crashes Audacity 1.3.4 (not sure about earlier versions).

Hurray for beta software!

There is a workaround though. Record a stereo track, click on the tracks name off to the left (it's a drop-down menu), click Split Stereo Track. Now you'll have two tracks labeled Left and Right. Click on that same drop down menu for both of these tracks and set them to Mono.

Now you'll have two mono tracks that will mix together when you play or export. Note that this will make your projects bigger. You can always highlight both tracks and click Tracks -> Mix and Render to mix them down to a single mono track (though I would keep them separated so you can process each mic differently, you'll have more options that way).

[drke]

Alatham,
Thanks for the feedback - I'm glad I'm not just going crazy. Your workaround works for me and, while not as easy as a single click, is easier than having to recover every track after a crash.

[Gale Andrews]

Thanks for the reports. It seems to be already fixed in the source code, so won't occur in 1.3.5 when released. When you make both channels mono, you may well have to reduce the gain of each on the Track Panel, otherwise the combined result may distort. For others who want to go stereo > mono and don't mind losing the content of one of the channels, you can also split the stereo track and simply close one of the channels - see:
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... ur_Project

Sorry about that..