How to fix stereo track panned left in a DAW

July 15, 2024 6:26 AM

I recently got some audio that was in stereo, but is panned all the way to the left. How can I put it in mono and panned to the center?

I received audio that was apparently in stereo (two horizontal lines in the track), but the recording was panned far to the left (only the top line has waveforms). I would like to pan this to the center (have one line of waveforms down the center of the track).

I’m editing this in GarageBand and have highlighted the track, gone into Recording Settings, and clicked the single ring for mono, and it’s still in stereo.

FWIW I have access to the latest versions of Logic and Audacity through the makerspace at my local library.

posted by pxe2000 to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

There are probably a lot of ways to do this. Are you command-line oriented? You can use the SoX command, which is installable with Homebrew:

sox input.aiff output.aiff channels 1

If you prefer Audacity, you can import the file, split the stereo track into two mono tracks, then export just the formerly left channel as mono.
posted by mkb at 7:37 AM on July 15 [7 favorites]

Since you're not recording new sound, none of the "record" settings are useful here. You need to render a new audio file from the one you have. Garageband can probably do this but instead of record settings look for "export" or "save as" settings that will allow you to write a new file in mono rather than stereo. It may be as easy as right clicking the waveforms. Otherwise check in the File menu somewhere.
posted by grog at 8:44 AM on July 15

I haven't used Garage band before since I'm in the ProTools eco system, but at least in that space, I'd create a new mono track and then copy the left channel into it or I'd go remember where the merge to mono option is. :)
posted by drewbage1847 at 11:05 AM on July 15

I'm really surprised there's no easy way to do this in garageband. Since you're on a mac just use this command from the terminal to extract the left channel from the file and create a mono file instead

afconvert -c 1 -d LEI16 my_stereo_file.wav my_mono_file.wav

posted by TwoWordReview at 11:31 AM on July 15 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I’m not as good with computer as I thought. Where would I enter this command?
posted by pxe2000 at 3:43 AM on July 16

open a terminal window by selecting your folder in Finder and right/2-finger click to open the context menu. Down at the bottom of the menu should be an option "New Terminal at Folder" - choose that.

Copy TwoWord's command - changing the file names to your files and hit return. It should chug away and drop the converted file in that folder
posted by drewbage1847 at 8:52 AM on July 16 [2 favorites]