Stereo recording modes: CUSTOMER_ONLY, CUSTOMER_MUTE, BOTH_CHANNELS

The Stereo Call Recordings setting has more than an on and off state. Once you move it off DISABLED, you choose one of three modes that decide which side of the conversation actually lands in the file. They sound similar but they record very different things, so picking the wrong one means you discover the gap only when you go looking for audio that was never captured.

The three modes

CUSTOMER_ONLY records the customer and leaves the agent side silent. CUSTOMER_MUTE is the mirror image: it records the agent and leaves the customer side silent. BOTH_CHANNELS captures all audio, with the agent on the left channel and the customer on the right. In every mode the file is still two-channel, so the layout stays the same; the difference is whether one of those channels comes out as silence. Remember that this Stereo recording runs in addition to your normal mono Call recording, not instead of it.

flowchart TD
  A[Stereo mode] --> B[CUSTOMER_ONLY]
  A --> C[CUSTOMER_MUTE]
  A --> D[BOTH_CHANNELS]
  B --> E[Customer audio agent silent]
  C --> F[Agent audio customer silent]
  D --> G[Agent left customer right]

When to use each one

Reach for BOTH_CHANNELS when you want the full conversation split cleanly by speaker. This is the default choice for quality review and the only mode where a reviewer can isolate the agent to score the pitch and then isolate the customer to confirm what was agreed. Because the speakers are already separated by channel, it is also the friendliest mode for transcription and Voice analytics, which can tag each side without guessing who spoke.

CUSTOMER_ONLY is useful when you care about what the customer said and consider the agent side noise for this campaign, or when you have a reason to keep the agent's audio out of a particular archive. CUSTOMER_MUTE is the reverse and fits cases where you want a clean record of the agent's delivery without the customer's voice, such as coaching libraries built only from agent speech. Both single-side modes still produce a stereo file; one channel simply plays as silence.

A gotcha worth knowing

These modes are not the same control as agent start and stop behavior. The mode decides which channels are captured; a separate Stereo Recording Agent Control setting decides whether the Agent can start or stop the recording at all, and it defaults to ALLFORCE so recording runs on every call without an off switch. So CUSTOMER_ONLY does not mean the agent has any control; it only means the agent's audio is silent in the resulting file. Keep the two settings straight or you will misread why a recording looks the way it does.

Whichever mode you pick, the stereo files need their own filename and they consume more disk than mono, so factor that into your Recording retention plan. If you have not turned the feature on yet, the walkthrough in how to enable stereo recording covers the filename rule and the test call. For how recording fits the whole campaign, see the call recording overview.

All three modes are available on every VICIfast plan with no add-on, so you can try them on a single campaign before committing. Our pricing has the details.