[solved] Recording audio in stereo, but sampler in only one channel

the_pedromarques

Hi
Noob trouble here:
In my experiment I'm trying to get the RT's to say an associate word, given a presented target word. In order to get cleaner measurements I want to use SayWhen (http://cogsci.mcmaster.ca/~peter/saywhen/). This program needs an audio (wav) file of the recorded full session by participant (not by trial) in stereo, but with a 'blip' sound signaling the onset of the stimulus (target word) on ONLY ONE of the channels. Is it possible to do so with sampler? I'm recording the responses with the sound recorder plugin and using the sampler to signal the onset, setting panning to one side only, but i'm unable to send it to just one of the channels in the wav file. Any hints?
thanks a lot

(and btw, opensesame is revolutionizing the way we build experiments in our lab, major respect!)

sebastiaan

Hi,

Could it be that the sampler simply plays back the marker sound through the speakers, and that the microphone records this sound? Because a microphone is (usually) mono, the marker sound (and the voice) will then be recorded on both channels (i.e. fake stereo), regardless of how the sampler is panned. Is something like this going on?

If your audio card has a reasonably advanced mixer application, you may be able to record the audio output (i.e. the marker sound) on one channel and the audio input (i.e. the voice) on the other channel. Whether this is possible and how it would work depends on your set up and the audio software that you have.

But if you have a simple audio card that only allows you to record one thing, then it may not be possible to record the marker sound on only one channel, because you cannot record stereo sound with a mono microphone.

Btw, if you are recording one long soundfile, you wouldn't necessarily need to use the sound recorder plug-in, which is pretty basic. You could just as well record the sound with Audacity running in the background, for example, perhaps even on a separate PC. This will give you a bit more freedom to play around with your set up.

and btw, opensesame is revolutionizing the way we build experiments in our lab, major respect!

Great to hear!

Cheers,
Sebastiaan

the_pedromarques

that simple solution worked like a charm. thanks!