Microphone Only Recording To One Side? Here's How To Fix It!

Is your recording only playing out of the left speaker? This is a common problem and this video will show you an easy solution!

In this video, you'll learn why your sound is only playing out of one side whether you are recording or streaming. I'll show you how to fix the problem in Audacity, Reaper, and OBS.

Need help setting up your new studio? Check out these free resources I've created for you...

0:00 - Introduction
0:15 - Why Your Recording Only Plays Through One Speaker
0:47 - How To Prevent The Problem Before Recording Or Streaming
1:58 - How To Fix The Problem With An Existing Recording

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[AudioUniversity]

Need help setting up your new studio? Check out these free resources I've created for you...

[minhduong]

Clear, concise, and saved lives. You my man are a hero

[thujankrishnakumar]

If you're a gamer/streamer/windows user looking for a hardware level fix. Just use a (Female to dual male) xlr splitter to both mic inputs so you get Left and Right audio. That way you don't need to mess with software and have a hardware level fix.

[Pixelchus]

Thank you so much! You just saved a 30 minute musical recording I did for my mums birthday (and possibly could not re-take). <3

[Auixerre]

You're a lifesaver! Bassoon was coming out of both speakers, but vocals were only coming out of the left one. :3

[HowToHeart]

I'm so grateful for this video! I was so desperate about how to solve this problem. And I was worried I would have to re-record my episodes for my podcast.
But you solved my problem, thank you so much!!

[JackAdams]

what about for Discord, skype or windows apps like windows voice recorder?

[IdkSterling]

This was a great tutorial, thank you for the help!

[spelunkerd]

This used to be a very common problem for neophyte contributors on Youtube. Many didn't know they were posting videos with sound coming through to only one ear. Very annoying! I discovered that if I would pull my 3.5mm headphone jack out a millimeter or two, suddenly the audio comes through to both headset speakers. I wanted to help those people, but not knowing what hardware they were using was a problem. All were posting from the mic built into a low level camcorder, as far as I know.

[mariojackson]

Thank you so much! I was just looking at my stream and I only heard one side of my headset playing from my mic. Straight to the point. New subscriber

[reinaldomartinez]

this solved my issue with adobe audition, never had the issue with reaper ! Thanks a ton!!

[LiftwithCee]

This video just saved my audio and helped to correct my issues. Thank you so much!

[joeystj]

yes, thanks you so much for the obs tip dude! good work

[BlueMK]

I arrived a bit late, but this guide helped me on my OBS Studio. After my streams when watching a few minutes I always heard my voice from one headphone. No longer, thanks for this guide!

[BlacksmithVRS]

Well this obviously fixes the issue for professional audio software, but what about windows? What if I want to use my XLR which is plugged in input 4 but I only hear it coming from the right side, because input 4 is paired with input 3?

[moses]

Very helpful! I was always wondering why my sound was so panned to the right side. And also why i heared layers of my recordings on top of each other. Thanks man!

[magottyk]

Had this issue but with live output from a dynamic mic only playing out of one side. The mono 6.5mm mic jack plug has only the tip and sleeve with no ring so even if your input socket is "stereo" the physical layer cannot put any signal into the right channel as you'd need to feed the tip and not the sleeve (common) into the right channel where the ring would normally be. In the particular instance the twin speaker cabinet is setup to take a stereo input @ 8 Ohms being driven by a 25+25W amp. While it is possible to bridge the speakers to either 4 or 16 ohms, that would cut out one side of the amp and either load up the one remaining side or reduce the output and also lose any minor stereo separation that the cabinet can produce, it's a much better solution to simply get signal to both channels.

The quick and dirty workaround was simply to take the tip and split it to a L/R output direct via a homespun splitter box but this somehow seems suboptimal as you're effectively halving the impedance ratio and thus creating a higher load on the mic. While it worked in practice and is a nice simple passive solution, it would seem to me that to do it right would require some kind of additional impedance probably resistive in the splitter box to correct the output to input ratio, particularly if you are feeding into various preamps with various input impedances.

Same thing if splitting after preamplification, you'd still be changing the impedance ratio and while it probably isn't a big issue with 20:1 or higher ratio's it could be a problem when dealing with 10:1 or lower ratio's.

While DAWs can sort this channel issue out, it isn't a solution that is transferrable to correcting the source signal for a more universal solution.

[johnnyjr.]

Cant believe its finally works... Thank you!

[rimurutempest]

Finally my issue is FIXED!!! Thank you very much<3

[yasenobg]

Tysm man i've been trying to fix that problem for more then 3 weeks