recorded sound only comes out in ONE channel?

[sleepykitty]

i'm really new to recording and stuff. do help.
i'm using a laptop to record some of my tunes. i use acoustica mixraft. i plug the mic into the laptop and position it over the amp's speakers. after i finish recording, the recorded sound only can be heard in the left channel of my speakers. however, when i use the laptop's built in mic, the sound comes outta both channels. how?

 

[unsane]

you're recording in mono when using the externic mic and stereo when using the inbuilt laptop one.

im not familiar with the program you're using, but look for the pan controls and use them. if all else fails just convert it into a stereo file.

 

[sleepykitty]

hmmm it turns out the software was recording in stereo. i flipped it over to mono and walah! tks unsane

 

[drumkit82]

conenction problem?

 

[MadWerewolfBoy]

Oh yea, its the other way round i think...

Your mic is a mono mic (well, most are, with only 1 band on the jack) and ur line-in/mic socket is stereo... Usually, for mic sockets, the soundcard will auto detect mono and split it into left and right channel equally... This rarely happens for line-in sockets.

So i guessed ur input was mno while ur com thought it was stereo, thus the sound only goes to 1 channel, with no signal to the other...

setting recording to mono is a good idea but it has a max limitation of 128kbps for mp3 files and 64kbps for wma files... but that's quite good actually... =)