Sound coming from one speaker

[doktorfaustus77]

Hello Everyone, I have a question, and it may turn out to be a stupid one. I am recording with Cakewalk Home Studio 2004. To my continued dismay, all of the tracks I record only come out of one speaker! How can I record in stereo or at least hear my music in it? The only way I can get sound to come out of both speakers is to add the reverb effect to every track. It is really annoying. Does this mean I need an audio interface? Right now I am using the soundcard that comes with a Dell computer, which I imagine is pretty cheesy. Or,even better, is there a simple remedy to my problem?

Best Regards,

Andrew Fletcher

[dachay2tnr]

I imagine that your problem is you are trying to record the tracks in stereo, but you are only recording on the left side of the stereo track.

If you are plugging into the Line In port on your sound card, this is a stereo input. However, if you plug a mono plug into it, it will only record on one side of the stereo track (probably the left).

What you should be doing is recording the tracks in mono. That is, when you select the input setting for the track in HS2004, select Sound Card 1/2 Left. DO NOT select Sound Card 1/2 Stereo. This will create a mono track.

The stereo playback will be created after you have recorded several tracks and start to pan them to various settings. When the mono track is panned center it will play from both speakers and be heard in the center of the stereo field. When you move the pan slider you "unbalance" the playback and cause the signal to be stronger in one speaker than the other - this creates the illusion of the signal being heard to the left or right (i.e., the side where the signal is stronger).