Stop S1 turning my mono tracks to stereo

[gabo]

No smart tool? Wow, keep learning, you'll get there.

I too came from Cakewalk, a number of years ago when bandlab took them over. IMO, there is no comparison, S1 is many times better than CW.

Not sure what you call a smart tool. What I call a smart tool is a tool that changes functionality based on a number of things... Where you place the cursor, what other keys you hit, etc.

The pointer has a drop down where you can pick range, cut, etc. etc. I have mine on "cut" by default, but if you choose something else then hitting ctrl will give you whatever you choose. And there's the range tool part of the smart tool based on where you hover over the audio.

So while editing a track, with the pointer I can hit ctrl and cut the audio. Then if I hover over the cut point I can either move the cut point, pull back the left side or pull back the right side depending on where I place the cursor. Or I can grab the audio and move it. Or I can grab the handles and fade in/out the audio, or I can move the audio to overlap, hit x to crossfade the audio. Or I can grab the handle in the middle and change the volume of the audio. Or I can hover over the right spot and hit alt to time stretch or compress the audio. The range tool comes into play when you use the upper half of the audio and select. With that you can double click a range to cut it, select multiple ranges by holding shift and double click to split all of them. Or use alt and ctrl to slip the cut audio. And that's just off the top of my head, there are more functions available just from the cursor depending on where you place it and what modifier you use... Seems pretty smart to me.


EDIT: Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread on turning a track to stereo, just saw the comment on smart tool and couldn't resist. By the way, I don't have a problem with tracks turning to stereo, if something causes it, it's just a click of the button to put it back.

 

[Rayman]

This is ridicules behavior IMHO. Tracking my first song using v7, been using v5 for 8 years and now when I bounce a mono track it becomes stereo. Nothing like derailing the session. My work flow for years has been to track guitar with a plugin, then transform to rendered audio, lock the track., and send output to a bus. So now I have to change the rendered track back to mono and bounce again to get it to be what it was in the first place, mono. Sorry this just pisses me off.

I just rendered a track that had Helix Native and I get a clipping warning of over 54 DB. Is S1 v7 funny like a clown? Does it amuse me?

 

[Surf.Whammy]

Interesting conversation!

I have a different strategy for ensuring stereo VSTi virtual instrument tracks are monaural--the only way true monaural panning is possible for a stereo VSTi virtual instrument track--which is due to nearly all VSTi virtual instruments being stereo (two-channel), where one only can hope it's just a matter of having two microphones when recording the actual audio played by a trained musician before digitizing to create the corresponding sampled-sound library, although one might suppose it's also possible to record monaurally and then to use various effects or even track doubling when digitizing to make the sample-sound library stereo (two-channel).

The problem is that stereo tracks have balance controls rather than true monaural panning controls; and balance controls only set the volume levels of the respective channels rather than actually moving the channels' audio.

Specifically, in a stereo channel, the position of the left-channel is pegged to far-left and the position of the right-channel is pegged far-right; so moving the balance control just raises or lowers the volume levels of the two channels, which is not true monaural panning.

The example I use is "Dazed and Confused" (Led Zeppelin), which was produced by Jimmy Page and has electric guitar and occasionally drums in various locations along what I call the "Rainbow Panning Arc" when one is listening with studio-quality headphones, although it also applies to studio monitors.

It took me a long time to discover this; but mostly because it makes no sense and is not the way things are done in recording studios where everything is monaural, even when there are two microphones, in which case each of the microphones is monaural and has its own monaural track.

As shown in the YouTube video, I use the Dual Pan (PreSonus) native effect to split a stereo VSTi virtual instrument track to create a monaural track so I can do true monaural panning. It's based on stereo sampled-sound libraries having a left-channel and a right-channel which usually are nearly identical, hence the strategy is to use only one of the channels, where I usually focus on the left-channel unless there is significant difference in the two channels.

Dual Pan lets me set the balance to the left-channel, which eliminates the right-channel; and then I use the Dual Pan left-channel knob ("Left") to do true monaural panning, as shown configured in the attached image.

This works nicely; and it has the advantage of working with Instrument Tracks, although it also works for stereo (two-channel) Audio Tracks and Bus Tracks.

Monaural vs. Stereo Audio Tracks

This is a new one for me, and mostly is something I never noticed due to using "Small" or "Normal" track lanes, where I call the instrument and audio clips "track lanes".

I did a few experiments, and toggling the "Mono/Stereo" button definitely works once the audio for an Instrument Track is recorded to the corresponding Audio Track.

This is excellent; and I think it will make mixing easier, although I plan to continue using Dual Pan (PreSonus) on Instrument Tracks that I do not record to Audio Tracks, which mostly is for mixing purposes, where for example I like to work with Instrument Tracks for kick drum, snare drum, and a few other VSTi virtual instruments when I want to be able to change them when mixing, including being able to adjust effects and other characteristics. Eventually, I will render the generated audio for the few remaining Instrument Tracks, but that's for later.

Summary

I think I understand the Stereo-to-Mono aspect for Audio Tracks, and it matches the experiments I performed; so now I have two ways to ensure I can do true monaural panning.

[NOTE: This is most easily heard when listening with studio quality headphones.]

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[FMN-Music]

A mono track won’t randomly change to stereo. So there must have been an editing action that caused this result. The question is what exactly you did that led to a stereo track. Without that information, it’s nearly impossible to discuss whether this behavior is intended or not.

Had this happen a couple of times, but could never reproduce it.
I had a Stereo (oo) Track, but with a mono input. I duplicated it and dragged an FX Chain onto the duplicate track. After that, the track sometimes was Mono (o). Never seen, when exactly that happened (I only recognized it, because the track got 3dB quieter) and could not ever reproduce it afterwards, doing the same steps. Very strange phenomena. My best guess is that FX Chains might be able change the channel configuration.. somehow.

 

[Rayman]

Just discovered that Bounce to New Track (Keep Speaker Format) keeps the track mono.
I re-mapped Ctrl-Alt-B to use this new command.