Audacity Forum

I'm hoping someone can explain what's occurring when playing back a recording.

First, my equipment:
Lenovo T61 laptop
M-Audio Fast track USB interface
External stereo speakers plugged into the interface
Guitar/bass amp connected from interface to amp via 1/4" guitar cord
Audacity 2.0.2
Windows 8 Pro (partition)
Linux LMDE (partition)

Second; any and all sounds generated from various apps are fine through both my speakers and amp (when the amp is plugged into the headphone jack on the interface which automatically bypasses the PC speakers).

Here's the issue:

1) I can record (my bass let's say) in stereo (comes out on one channel), but can't record in mono.
2) All recorded sounds play back fine through my speakers, but there's no sound when played played back through my amp.
3) The only way my recorded bass will play back through the amp is if I split the stereo track to mono.

On a side note, I'm getting the exact same playback behavior on my Linux partition. So what I can't figure out is why a recorded stereo track won't play back through my amp unless I mix or split the track to mono.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You have a gift. All the information is there and I read it four times, but I can't picture the setup in my head.

The FastTrack is feeding both the amp and your speakers? How are they connected?

1) I can record (my bass let's say) in stereo (comes out on one channel), but can't record in mono.

The bass is connected directly to the FastTrack, or the amp and then to the FastTrack? Which channel do you get? Left?

The FastTrack may not be able to manage in mono. Does the audio device mount say "Fast Track" in Windows or does it just say USB Audio Device? It's possible that FastTrack driver software may give you more options.

On a wild hunch, if you're recording "Right" and the system is playing mono Left, then the amp will be silent even though the stereo speakers work. This is fuzzy guessing on my part like I said, I can't visualize your system.

Koz

kozikowski wrote:The FastTrack is feeding both the amp and your speakers? How are they connected?

Speakers are connected to the back of the the Fast Track via 1/8" audio cables. There's a 1/4" headphone jack in the front of the unit. When you connect headphones or in in my case, an amp, the speakers are bypassed. There also an additional XLR input.

1) I can record (my bass let's say) in stereo (comes out on one channel), but can't record in mono.

The bass is connected directly to the FastTrack, or the amp and then to the FastTrack? Which channel do you get? Left?

The bass is connected directly to the Fast Track. It's coming out the right channel.

The FastTrack may not be able to manage in mono. Does the audio device mount say "Fast Track" in Windows or does it just say USB Audio Device? It's possible that FastTrack driver software may give you more options.

It says Fast Track. The Fast Track control panel just deals with sample rates and latency. Some further experimentation shows that it's recording and playing back on the right channel. I either have to split the stereo track and change the channel or split to mono, which is fine but I still don't get why I can't record in mono.