Monaural output from recording sources?

[jpgirard]

I'm a new user with an Ion turntable and Audacity 1.2.4, running on Windows 2000 Pro.

I am converting my very large record collection to CDRs (which I've been doing for some time, using a much more cumbersome arrangement with Total Recorder).

About 75% of my collection is monaural (including 45s and 78s). The Audacity output monitor seems to play everything from a mono source through the right speaker while recording. I got it to play through both speakers once, but it was an accident and I haven't been able to do it a second time.

This isn't a big problem. I can simply divide the stereo tracks, after recording, and eliminate the empty one before saving to WAV, and that seems to work fine, but It seems like I ought to be able to listen through both speakers (I use headphones) while recording. It's an annoyance, and if there's a solution I'd like to know what it is, but I haven't been able to find it in the documentation or in a search on here.

One other thing: Sometimes when I do a multiple save to WAV, with all tracks labeled (and it doesn't seem to matter whether I do it by track number of label), Audacity saves the entire LP as the first file, so that I have to save the first track separately. I thought I had this solved, by saving the whole thing to WAV myself, as a single file, before doing the multiple save of tracks, but then today that didn't work. I have a feeling there's some little thing I'm supposed to do that I'm not doing, but I can't figure out what it is. Again, this is not a big thing, just an annoyance.

Thanks

Jim Girard

[kozikowski]

Mono recordings are generally recorded with a lateral cut. Stereo cartridges are orthagonal and should give you signal on both left and right with a mono show.

Audacity defaults to recording mono when you install it. Check Audacity, Preferences, Audio I/O and make sure everything is the way you want. Some Audacities make you restart the program before new settings stick, so you can make a lot of recordings with the wrong settings by accident.

Just to make sure you're listening to what you think you're listening to, download the Left-Right test clip and play in Audacity.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/soundtests.html

You know you can preview that you're getting two channels before recording by clicking inside the recording meters while the record is playing? If you only get one bouncing column, you have something to fix.

Last, it is possible to have unstable wires at the back of the cartridge and that can give you some very weird results.

Koz

[kozikowski]

Missed one. Since you're in Windows, you also have to make sure the sound control panel is set correctly. There are two and it's a little wacky to get to the record panel. The playback panel comes up immediately. Make sure all the pan controls are set to the middle and the record control for the correct source is turned up. Remember, there are two.

Koz

[alatham]

The monitoring through your soundcard is handled entirely in your soundcard driver software. You'll have to go through that software to pan each input (labeled Left and Right, most likely) to the center. But you'll then have to reset it to monitor a stereo signal.

Koz is right about a stereo turntable outputting two identical tracks on both channels when using a mono disc. Something sounds fishy here.

[jpgirard]

Yes. I'm becoming a bit suspicious of the cartridge, particularly because sound does seem to cut in and out on the upper channel (don't remember whether that's left or right) while I'm recording. Years ago I had a turntable with a needle that sometimes only picked up one side of the groove. I hate to admit it, but I used to twang it gently with one fingertip, and that fixed it. I don't intend to do that this time.

The odd thing, though, is that it does pick up both channels of a stereo recording.

Audacity was indeed set to stereo (2) by default, so I changed it to mono. The downloaded recording plays correctly in Audacity (although I have to confess I don't really know what "out of phase" means -- it sounds different).

I'm used to working with the soundcard panel, but I hadn't looked at the record panel since I was getting sound as soon as I clicked on "monitor output" (my problem always used to be getting any sound at all while recording). When I did look at the recording panel, I found that "Microphone" was selected. I changed it to "What U Hear" (which is what I had it set to when using Total Recorder). If that's wrong, please let me know.

Thanks for the help.

Jim Girard

[jpgirard]

I tightened the cartridge nut slightly and that seems to have fixed the problem. Sigh.

When I record in mono, both green bars show up, but only the top red bar. Since it sounds fine, both recording and playing back, and I only get a single mono track when actually recording, I assume that's normal.

One other thing. I notice that when I choose "New Project," Audacity always opens a second instance of the program, even though there's no project in the current window. Is that correct? If I simply X out of the project in the current window without saving it, and start over, does Audacity save the new version of the project, from that point on (when I later close the program and tell it to save the changes), or does it save everything, including the first aborted project?

By the way, I like this program a lot. I've worked with quite a few recording/editing programs over the years (mostly WAV editing) and so far Audacity seems to do everything I need to do. The only exception might be the ability to set the gain for an entire project. I have a little program called MP3Gain that lets me do that for a batch of MP3s, so they all have about the same "loudness" when played back, but I haven't found a similar thing for WAVs. It's not quite the same thing as normalization.

JimG

[groovemite]

Hi

I'm posting on this thread as I too am a beginner and have a question (or 2) regarding 'stereo'.

Using the Ion turntable and latest version of Audacity, I have the Ion connected to my MD input on the back of my stereo (Red & white connectors) and the Ion TT is set as Line. Playing an LP comes out of both speakers OK, and I have set Audacity to 2-stereo with Aux as the input source. I also have 2 channels showing when recording but..

1. Is it really stereo? I am seeing 2 red bars/2 green on recording and playback. I have twin recording channels showing the soundwaves, but I don't believe it is truly stereo as both are identical!! I just seem to have twin mono?? The whole idea of stereo was to have different instruments/sounds on different channels and panning between them ( in truly 60's style).

2. Why do I have 6 monitoring channels available on Audacity, when I only need 2, and the active ones are always on the bottom?

Any ideas/advice gratefully appreciated (or maybe I am just being dumb).

Cheers.

[kozikowski]

<<<I don't believe it is truly stereo as both are identical>>>

And you know they're both identical because you zoomed all the way into the waveform and each blue wiggle is the same top and bottom?

Something to do to confirm that it's really two-channel mono is to install the CenterPanRemover tool and apply it.

CenterPanRemover.zip
http://audacityteam.org/nyquist/

"Open With" the BOMArchiveHelper in Mac OS-X and pull the centerpanremover.ny tool over to your plug-ins folder.

Apply it to a test recording. If you truly have mono, the show will vanish.

People are posting that you need to make sure that your USB connection is secure to avoid audio problems. Yes, you should make sure it's secure, but it has nothing to do with the audio. The machine will stop dead if that connection isn't firm.

<<<The whole idea of stereo was to have different instruments/sounds on different channels and panning between them ( in truly 60's style).>>>

Yes, but not every record was pressed in Ping-Pong stereo. [LISTEN TO THE JET GOING OVERHEAD!!!] and many recordings were pressed from older mono tapes. That's why one of the first things we do in troubleshooting is to find known-good-working stuff and work up from there.

It is possible to have a wiring problem on a turntable and have a stereo cartridge give you really odd-ish sound in two-track mono. It's what happens when the center ground connection in the tone arm goes away but the signal wires are still connected. As we are finding out from all the postings, there is a price to be paid in reliability when you buy a whole turntable and system for the same money that we used to pay for just the cartridge and stylus.

I would "exercise" the connections. If the arm and cartridge pulls apart as a normal thing, reinstall it a couple of times and see if that doesn't solve your stereo problems.

Koz