Weird issue - left and right tracks

[mjbphotos]

Wasn't sure where to put this ...

So when I was hooking up my new JBL monitors, I got the cables reversed. Found this out when I went into a Reaper project and was adjusting the panning on a track. No big deal, switched the cables out, everything's kosher.
Then I render the file, and import it onto Roxio audio editor (I use for quick trimming, volume boosting, MP3 conversion) and find the channels reversed! What was once left is right, and vice-versa - WTF?
I haven't put the Roxio-ed track back into Reaper to see where things are, but I guess that's the next step.
Maybe Roxio is just f*cked? (It's an older version)

 

[miroslav]

Maybe when you had the cables reversed....you're mixing compensated for that.....then when you reversed the cables again, it then made your mixes reversed.
IOW...you might need to also reverse the mixes along with the cables if you did the mixes while the cables were reversed.....?

 

[BroKen_H]

Mike, that is weird...

Haven't played with Reaper much, but does it allow you to set outputs. I know in Reason, you can reverse stereo at any time by changing the patch cables. It would be difficult to do by accident, though...pretty sure Roxio doesn't allow selecting outputs, but it might have a check box somewhere for reversing the stereo field. I know you can work with two separate mono tracks to create a multilayer stereo. Up is left/down is right or vice versa, don't remember...

 

[ashcat_lt]

Are you mixing this for video where the sound positions have to correspond to some visual cue? If not, who cares? I'm only half kidding. Sometimes I like to flip the stereo image while mixing just to give myself a different perspective. Neither your ears nor your room are likely to be exactly matched, plus there's some psychobabble in there somewhere...

But of course you have to figure it out. I honestly can't imagine how this could happen. If you're listening to it in Reaper, close, open in Roxio, and things are reversed... Shit I just don't know. They almost have to be routing to the same pair of outputs, right? You can reverse the L/R in Reaper by setting the Master's Width to -100, but you'd hear that, and it would render like that, and it would still sound the same as in Roxio.

Do you have anything happening in the Monitor FX? Hold Shift and click the FX button on the Master. If anything in there is inverting the stereo image (click everybody's 2In2Out buttons and make sure everything is backslashes, not forward), that would do it.

Otherwise I'd say do a quick control test with hard panned tones now and make sure that it's not what miro said.

Edit - I guess I ass you me'd that you are actually rendering the master bus. If you're rendering selected tracks or something else then all bets are off. You could reverse it seven or nine times before you actually hear it. Why would you do it anyway? Shrug...

 

[mjbphotos]

Thanks for suggestions, when I get a moment, I'll look at everything. It's definitely not the cables, because panning to the left made the sound go to the right (in Reaper), which is why I swapped them. In Reaper, it was obvious right away, because the mix I had going had the starting guitar part on othe left side only. I'm looking at the pan control and the sound is coming out of the right, so I just figured it was the cables. Put it in Roxio, and looking at the waveform the guitar is now on the right, when it had been panned left in Reaper.

Ashcat - agreed it doesn't really make a difference in the long run (I'm not synching to video), but I've gotten used to panning with my drums as 'viewed/heard' by someone standing in front of them (hi-hat to left, floor toms to right, etc).

 

[slug]

I lost my hearing in my right ear from a virus 17 years ago ,All my mixes are in Mono, I am VERY old school