stereo input on soundcard?

[artCROSS]

Here's me being stupid:

I bought the mxl603 stereo pack to record my acoustic guitar...sounds absolutely fabulous by the way when it is in stereo. I have a mixer with subouts, direct outs, etc. which i plug these two mics in, and then i plug the mixer into my computer's sound card...the problem is, i can't get it to record in stereo...i think that the input on my sound card (factory...i know, before you bash me on it, hear me out) only records in mono...is this true? what i did was take the two channel, take a y cable that has 2 mono's and 1 stereo, plug the stereo end into my computer, plug the 2 mono's into the direct outs of channels 1 and 2.

I'm currently saving up to buy an edirol fa101 because i need 8 simultaneous inputs and I have an iMac, meaning no PCI cards. However, until then, i want to find a way to utilize stereo recording...i don't want to buy a new sound card since i'm going to buy the edirol within the next 3 months, but i want to record a lot sooner than that...any advice would be appreciated, especially if it is something i could do with my current equipment. Thanks!

 

[guttadaj]

I don't see why what you're doing wouldn't work - seems to make sense. But what I do i take the output from my mixer's Main Out (Tape Out works too). Those outs have separate L and R outputs, so I do the same thing you were describing using a Y cable taking the 2 mono's into 1 stereo plug into my soundcard. Then in my software, I choose my soundcard's Line In - Left in one track and its Line In - Right in another.

 

[AlChuck]

As far as I'm aware, the Line In on any consumer soundcard or onboard sound chips is a stereo minijack just like the headphone out on a Walkman. Is it possible that you are using a Mic In -- which would be a mono input with a very cruddy preamp circuit in line with it, meant to take the signals from those little plastic electret condensor mics that come with the PC.

Don't forget to pan the mics correctly too on the mixer -- one channel should be full left, the other full right (I suppose if they are both panned fully left or fully right, that would explain why you only get one side, too).