Odd behavior of Audacity while joining and splitting of stereo tracks

[Esmond Ivers]

I worked on Audacity for few weeks now and I am bit confused about the designation of Left channel and Right Channel. Import 2 mono tracks which are different from each other. Assign the top one to right Channel and the one at bottom to Left Channel. Now select both channels and use Mix & render. It creates Mixed Stereo Tracks but the positions are now switched. Now if you use ‘Make Stereo track’ option, then it ignores the designation and simply merges it. Now while splitting the Stereo track, it assigns the top one to the left channel by default and bottom to the right channel. I wanted to avoid this inconsistency and need help with it. Can anybody help me?

[-Deven-]

When you use ‘Mix and Render’, the outcome in form of stereo track is has its channel settings, pan positions & gain levels affected. ‘Mix & render’ is works differently and doesn’t focus on maintaining the positions of channels. It just simply merges the tracks and its attributes without processing it. In other words, it just glues the tracks to one another. According to your question, you need to use ‘Make Stereo Track’ option to maintain the position of left channel and right channel.

[Shurod]

According to my observations while using Audacity, I think that if one has R channel above L channel with L channel hard panned to left, then using ‘Mix and render’ breaks the panning. The result of this is that the assigned L channel audio becomes weak and s replaced by R channel. In this situation, if Mono tracks are used then, the top becomes assigned to Left Channel. If R mono channel is placed above L mono channel then to prevent the reversal, L channel moves itself above R channel.

[DanielaA]

I too have worked on mono channels, and I have observed that 2 different mono tracks have 2 different slots for pan settings. While a multiple stereo tracks have a single common pan setting editor. So when Mono tracks are worked upon and rendered to create one single stereo track, then the value of pan attributes average themselves giving undesirable results.

[Panop]

The problem discussed in above comment which suggests that mono tracks average out the pan settings while generating output. This also happens with other attributes of Mono audio files. This problem is also noticed in volume sliders and envelopes. The conflict between attributes of 2 mono tracks can be avoided by combining the tracks such that the resulting audio is only concerned with track’s audio. It should not try to adopt the attributes like Panning, envelopes & volume levels.

[AnitG]

I have encountered similar problems while trying to equate ‘stereo pan’ with ‘panning a track’. Stereo pan just applies a mask to negative gain of audio track which is panned away from main track. You can observe this by putting two distinctly different signals in Left and Right and then listening to hard panned audio with knob turned back and forth in both directions. Here the stereo Left and Right signals are not summed and only hear sound from one channel.

[Koman]

I suggest that this is the case of preference mismatch among the pan setting, gain levels and envelope settings while rendering. This is resulting in Audacity moving the r track above the L track before executing the ‘Mix and Render’. According to me Audacity is doing much more complex process then just combining two tracks together. This is resulting in mishandling of track sliders and envelopes. By using ‘Mix and Render’, Audacity is duplicating the functions in name of merging the tracks. I think the only way to avoid this is by letting the sliders and envelopes be not tampered and let them be at default values.

[GALIENA]

I think that this case is of retaining envelopes after using ‘mix and render’ & ‘make Stereo Track’ options. It should have been possible to split the track and merging it again without losing the settings of envelopes that have been used. The problem is caused when 2 mono tracks with 2 different envelopes are merged. After merging, if you try to change the settings of envelope, it will behave differently at different parts of track. This inconsistent behavior of envelopes is not good for working.

[BillieJ]

The closest solution to this problem I found is to leave the values of Pan settings and gain levels at zero. In any case, gain level and pan do not represent what one hears. So setting them at zero doesn’t matter much. Once after setting it to zero, if you move the pan slider or gain level, then you might notice changes in Right channel.