Topic: This is a new one.. weird channel imbalance with 4-channel mix (Audacity)

[Shadow_7]

I could also have been that one of your cables is inverted wiring wise.  Where they your cables?  It's not uncommon to have an inverted cable in your collection if you double mic drums on opposite sides of the head.  I've never done that myself, but in the absence of a phase reversal switch in the chain, it can be done to lower the work in post.

Depending on how you did the editing, you might have mixed things up.  On the little drop down to the left of tracks, you can split a stereo track.  And you can also assign whether that track plays left or right or both (mono).  Perhaps that track is set to mono, while the others only play on one of two ouput channels.  Or theres some phase thing going on.

[acidjack]

^^ So far I think it's just an odd reinforcement of signals.  I tested the mics at the show by snapping fingers in front of R/R and L/L.... both were right, so it's not the cables.

Also familiar with the Audacity drop-down settings - those were fine, too...

Anyway, the show ended up sounding fine - I just adjusted the levels.   Hear for yourself... http://www.nyctaper.com/?p=2821

[Shadow_7]

Phase inversion isn't going to show up as Left being Right or Right being Left.  Phase doesn't really affect anything until you mix it with tracks recorded with the opposite phase.  You can get this effect with differences in distance of the mic(s) from the source.  Or because the clocks on different devices (even of the same make / model) differ.  i.e. using 2x 2 track recorders instead of 1x 4 track recorder.  Not saying that that is what's going on.  Basically if you invert the track and it corrects, that's a good indicator.  Or if it's different by itself, than it is mixed, which you seemed to have already noticed.  Could be lots of things, but phase is a common thing when dealing with mixes.  If it's a difference in clocks, it'll come and go in and out of phase as things line up, then get out of alignment.  Stuff which wasn't present in the original source, or present in the individual tracks when solo'd.