confused about stereo/mono imports

[benwhit]

Hey guys,
I've been importing mp3's into audacity, and sometimes the audio shows up as mono while other times it's stereo. I was wondering how that works out, because the audio quality gets ruined if it randomly chooses to turn it into a mono track.
Any help appreciated, thanks~

[kozikowski]

I don't think Audacity "chooses" to make the show mono. It opens up what's there. Have you tried to just "open" the shows instead of importing them?

What are your Audacity settings?

Edit > Preferences >

44100, 32-floating, Stereo?

Audacity 1.2 comes out of the box in mono, not stereo. If you change settings, restart Audacity.

Koz

[kozikowski]

audio quality gets ruined if it randomly chooses to turn it into a mono track.

That may be a monitoring problem. How are you listening? If you have something wrong with your speaker wiring, a mono show will sound really weird compared to a stereo show. You should almost not be able to tell.

Does this sound test come out right? The fourth segment should sound like the voice is behind you or in a barrel.

http://www.kozco.com/tech/LRMonoPhaset4.wav

Koz

[benwhit]

My settings and speakers seem to be alright. Could you take a look at one of the files i'm having problems with?
http://www.supload.com/listen?s=5mesUp# (download link is below player)
You can tell it's a stereo track, it just doesn't want to open as one =(
Thanks for the help =)

[kozikowski]

It's stereo at a very high quality bitrate and sounds terrific.

Whenever we start getting system insanity, we try to get people off Audacity 1.2. 1.2 is no longer under support and is no longer patched, corrected or updated. Get Audacity 1.3.

http://audacityteam.org/download/

You can install both versions, but only use one at a time. Audacity 1.3 Projects will not open in 1.2.

You should get MP3 and FFMpeg from those same web pages and not use older plugin software.

Koz

[benwhit]

Well that was an easy fix for all my problems lol. Thanks a bunch for the help

[steve]

Confirmed - another bug in 1.2.6 and another reason to update to 1.3.