Recording voiceovers in Premiere - why am I getting stereo instead of mono?

[davidp91420439]

I'm using a USB mic (Samson Meteor) to record voiceovers in Premiere.  For some reason, when I finish recording, I'm getting a dual audio track (two waveforms), meaning stereo instead of mono.  Any idea why this is?  Is it perhaps duplicating the mono and generating two identical tracks?  Thoughts?

[Mike Dziennik]

Are you recording onto a mono track or a 'Standard' track ie. 'Stereo'.

Create a new mono track and try recording onto that...

[davidp91420439]

I'm not sure, but I think I'm just recording onto a standard track.  How do I specify that the track be mono?  When I recorded with my lav mic on my phone and imported the mp3 into Premiere, it automatically shows up as mono, but when recording with the Meteor mic in my computer directly in Premiere it shows up as two identical tracks (stereo, I assume?).  So it doesn't seem to be an issue with the way the audio track is set up, but with rather how Premiere is deciding how to interpret the audio clip.  Is this something I should be conerned about?  Will duplicating the audio into two separate L and R tracks change the sound at all, or is it something I shouldn't care about?

[Meg The Dog · Accepted solution]

Right click on the track header area and from the drop down menu choose Add Tracks (with an "s", not add track).

When the pane opens add a mono audio track:

Record your voice over there and it will be mono.

davidp91420439  wrote

Will duplicating the audio into two separate L and R tracks change the sound at all, or is it something I shouldn't care about?

It won't change the sound from a mono source, and the amount of concern should be very low - but I would say it is less confusing down the road to have mono clips from a mono source.

MtD