How do I change microphone to mono channel rather than stereo?

[jjes]

Hi,

I’m on Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS I use a Focusrite Scarlett Solo 2nd Gen audio interface to plug my microphone into my PC.

My microphone is a Rode Podmic it is an analogue mic that has a single (mono) audio channel however Ubuntu treats it as a stereo signal this causes all the audio from the mic to play on the left side only rather than split the audio to both speakers.

I have tried Pulse Audio Volume Control and there is not a setting to change it to mono as the Solo is used for output and input.

I have seen some guides online that say you need to make a config file for pulse audio I have tried to follow some of them but I am used to Windows and this is over my head I don’t really know where to begin.

Please help not having my microphone is a deal breaker for me I have tried for ages to swap to Linux from Windows but there are always things like this making it difficult.

I know I can change the mic to mono in some applications however I use the mic as my main audio input so I would like it as a mono source globally.

Thanks.

[jjes]

Okay I seemed to have fixed it so I will post here for anyone else.

Most of the guides online are for pulseaudio but Ubuntu uses pipewire also most of the guides are outdated.

You need to find the name of the mic input so use this command

pactl list sources | grep 'alsa.input'

then you need to make it mono by using this command

pactl load-module module-remap-source source_name=mono_mic channel_map=mono master=add-the-name-of-your-source-here

this works but you have to do it every time you load up the OS also I think it may lower the volume a bit.

Apparently you can make it permanent and fix the volume issue by making a configuration file but I haven’t got that far yet.