Changing tracks’ mono/stereo status

SONAR has a Mono/Stereo button in each track module in the Track Inspector and Console view. The buttons in the track modules force each track to play in either stereo or mono, but preserve the tracks’ pan positions in the stereo mix. The Mono/Stereo button in each track forces the track’s audio signal to enter any patched plug-ins as either mono or stereo, whether or not the tracks are mono or stereo. This allows you to use either mono effects on a stereo track or stereo effects on a mono track.

To use a track’s Stereo/Mono button

Note: You may lose important stereo data by using mono effects with stereo tracks because your stereo tracks are summed to mono in order to pass through the effect. If you never want your stereo data to be summed to mono, select stereo.

1.	Open the Track Inspector or Console view.

2.	In the track you want to force to either mono or stereo for processing effects, click the Stereo/Mono button to the desired position:

When the button is lit, the track streams in stereo.

When the button is unlit, the track streams in mono.

Note: It is not possible to set a track’s Stereo/Mono button to Stereo if a mono plug-in is the first effect in the track’s FX Rack.

Mono audio clips may be increased by 3 dB in certain scenarios

There are some situations where the level of a mono clip will be increased by 3 dB if the track's output interleave (mono/stereo toggle) is set to mono:

If the track has mixed stereo and mono clips

The track has a synth selected as its input source

Input Echo is enabled or the track is armed for recording

In summary, whenever the track output interleave is mono and the data interleave is stereo, mono data will be increased in level by 3 dB.

Using mono VST plug-ins on stereo tracks may cause out of sync audio

When using a mono VST plug-in on a stereo track (interleave set to Stereo), the left and right channels will be out of sync. The left channel is processed by the mono effect, and delay compensation is applied, while the right channel is not processed and does not have delay compensation applied. The signal will look something like this:

Left channel: Wet signal (delayed)

Right channel: Dry signal (no delay)

A mono VST plug-in will work correctly if Enable Mono Processing is checked in the VST Plug-in Properties dialog box and the track interleave is set to mono.

Note: Enable Mono Processing is enabled by default in SONAR. If you are playing back a legacy project in SONAR and notice the project does not sound the same, try to disable Enable Mono Processing for any mono plug-ins used in the project.

 

See:

Changing track settings