Audacity Forum

Hi

I always get louder sound in right channel in Audacity, when i record CASSETTES in 2 channel Stereo, why !??


When i Record old music casettes in Audacity to digital quality to my computer, blue input on Pc, is stereo !

It says stereo after record, but sound always get louder on right stereo channel, why !??

Important, see picture evidence, of higher activity on the right channel !
http://bjoern1982msn.piczo.com/informat ... var=000044

I have microphone and everything mutet on XP soundboard, it records sound of people in the room, if a person talks ! Why !??? I get the casette sound in Stereo to my pc, but people cant talk, when i record !

- The cassette is in Stereo !
- I use the light blue input on my computer, thats stereo input, i dont use the pink microphone
input, because thats mono !

Is it something wrong on my laptop sound input, i use a great 2 that becomes 1 cable, tried other
cables !

-Tried different Audacity versions !
-Tried different sound tapes in Stereo !



WHYYYYYY !????????????

Possibly because your tape replay heads are out of alignment - or maybe you are playing the tapes on a different deck from that on which the tape was recorded and the alignment varies between the two machines. (Or it could be down to a poor contact at a plug/socket).

You can fix it by using Effect > Normalize This effect works on each channel independently so is useful in the case like you have where the channels are unbalanced.

What I do note from your posted image is that your input signal appears to be too hot and you are getting clipping - so you will need to reduce it.

You might want to have a read of thsis set of tutorials in the manual: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.ph ... iscs_to_CD

WC

or the original recording was unbalanced
or
the pad is worn and not making solid contact with the edge of the tape
or
your sound card has imbalances in its channels
or
you twisted the knob on the player off of center
or
your players channels are not balanced
or
the source was off center to be artsycraftsy
we have an fm station that insists on doing that to the announcer and it is very annoying when you expect a single voice to be centered

Hi. I would say the first thing you should check is the levels on the cassette player's meters, assuming it has them. If they are showing different l/r levels then you know the problem is (almost certainly) on the tape. To be sure, you should do this on the machine that was used to record the tape. If that is not possible then try it on other players that play other tapes okay, which wouldn't be a bad idea anyway as it would eliminate the possibility that the original machine recorded fine but has some fault on playback (not that likely but if you want to be sure...).

I've had similar things happen to me and it's not always easy to isolate the problem as there are so many places where it could go wrong. Quite often it's the tape but can easily be a dodgy lead with maybe a badly soldered connection in one of the plugs, or maybe the plug is not sitting straight in the soundcard input. This can happen if you are having to use adapters, which can be a bit bulky and pull it off line, so not making proper contact with both l/r connectors inside the socket. You can easily isolate the lead as the problem by trying a different one (which I just notice you already tried!)

My general advice would be to start at the source and work your way down the chain, one step at a time. Thumbs up to the other suggestions made here but don't forget - follow the chain and only do one thing at a time or you won't know what solved it. Apologies if you already know this but there's no harm repeating it.

Good luck,
Swatcher

PS: I don't know if this forum lets you but maybe you could post some picures of your setup if you get nowhere. It might help.

Excellent advice Swatcher, and yes you can put pictures directly into posts.
There are two ways of doing that:

1) If the picture already exists on the Internet you can use the "Img" button when you are writing the post and put the URL (web address) of the picture between the "Img tags".

2) If the picture is on your computer as a PNG, JPG or GIF file you can use the "Upload attachment" feature (below the text edit box) to upload the picture, then use "Place in line" to create a link at the cursor position to set the place in the post where the image will appear.

You should normally try to keep images to about 500x500 pixels so that they fit in the forum layout (larger pictures will be given scroll bars).
There is a limit of 3 pictures per post.