Audacity Forum

Hey,

Earlier this week I got myself a new laptop (Dell XPS), but now I'm having problems when I try to record in Audacity. When I hit the recordingbutton, no signal is being recorded when Audacity is in monorecording-mode. When I switch over to stereorecording, it does record my bassguitar but only on the right channel... Normally it should record my bass in a monotrack, but it doesn't...
Do you guys know how this comes?
For my recordings I use my bass plugged into a M-audio FastTrack MKII USB

Your help is really apreciated!!!

Has this ever worked on the Dell XPS?
It is normal on many good quality devices for only the Left channel to be recorded when recording mono. This is a feature of the device drivers (nothing to do with Audacity) and is made like that so as to record a higher quality signal when recording mono (no noise creeping in from the unused channel). If only the Right channel is being recorded, that is strange (especially if it has suddenly changed from Left to Right) and may indicate a problem with the device driver (unless there's a switch on the Fastrack that has been inadvertently changed).

steve wrote:Has this ever worked on the Dell XPS?
It is normal on many good quality devices for only the Left channel to be recorded when recording mono. This is a feature of the device drivers (nothing to do with Audacity) and is made like that so as to record a higher quality signal when recording mono (no noise creeping in from the unused channel). If only the Right channel is being recorded, that is strange (especially if it has suddenly changed from Left to Right) and may indicate a problem with the device driver (unless there's a switch on the Fastrack that has been inadvertently changed).

No it's the first time I worked with Audacity on this laptop... But if I only got the right channel, what do I have to do to get a good track with left and right at the same levels??

BassicsOfLife wrote:No it's the first time I worked with Audacity on this laptop...

If it worked previously on a different machine, then I would suspect that the device drivers are to blame.
It would probably be worth checking the M-audio web site to see if there are updated drivers available for your FastTrack (it would be best to fix the source of the problem if possible rather than just dealing with the symptoms).

Oh sorry, I forgot to write that bit.
You need to use Audacity 1.3.13 http://audacityteam.org/download/
In fact, if you are using Audacity 1.2.x, there's a possibility that just upgrading to 1.3.13 could fix the problem.

Assuming that you still need to make a stereo, right channel only recording into a mono recording that plays through both speakers:
Click on the name of the track and from the drop down menu select "Split Stereo to Mono".
Then delete the silent track.
(that's it - really simple).

The fact that you got the right channel and not the left points to minor system damage or insanity. Normal systems faced with a conflict almost always use the Left as default.

We can get rid of many problems by insisting on an upgrade to Audacity 1.3.

Koz

Hmmm strange I use the version of Audacity that you guys are mentioning above AND it's a brand new laptop, so I don't expect that kind of problems actually...
But also thank you for your help so far it's really appreciated!!

BassicsOfLife wrote:I use the version of Audacity that you guys are mentioning

You posted in the Audacity 1.2.x part of the forum - I'll move this topic to the Audacity 1.3.x forum.

Oh I'm sorry...

No worries, LOTS of people do that
However, if you have any ideas about how we can lay out the forum to make it more obvious which forum board to use, please post your suggestions here.
This is the current layout of the front page (board index). Any suggestions?