Audacity Forum

I'm trying to transfer vinyl/cassette to stereo .wav/.mp3 files using an ART USB preamp, USB cable, Audacity 1.3.10-beta and Win7 64-bit on an HP dv7 laptop. I've set up "microphone" (USB Audio Codec) under Win7's "Recording devices" and made its properties "2 channels, 16 bit, 44100" as the default. During recording: the preamp-monitored sound is in stereo, the L-R meters in Audacity reflect stereo input, the audio track waveforms match the stereo input, but when I extract the .wav/.mp3 files they all seem to be mixed down to mono. (Under Audio Device Info in Audacity, everything that has Output Channels is listed as "2".) Anything else I can do? Is my set-up appropriate for what I'm trying to do? Any help would be appreciated.

(Sorry if this was covered but I did search "stereo" in the Windows threads.) Thanks!

Make sure you are using 1.3.12 Beta (Help > About Audacity); older versions may have bugs.

When you say you extract the MP3 or WAV do you mean "export" or are are you burning to CD and listening to the result of that? In what application are you hearing the audio as mono? To satisfy yourself whether the files are really stereo, File > Import them back into Audacity.


Gale

Yes, "export". My mistake on the terminology. I am just listening to the exported .wav/.mp3s in Media Player with headphones. I will try updating to 1.3.12 and re-recording and importing the audio back into Audacity. Thank you for your quick response.