Bass and drums - mono or stereo?

I have just tried to freeze the Modo Bass synth track, and it was converted into a stereo audio file. I converted it to mono and it looks like it sounds much better.
Now I wonder - why the audio Freeze is made stereo by default? Probably, it was set so in Modo Bass plugin, but I can not find there an option to switch mono-stereo...
I have read some topics about recording bass and drums and I lean to recording bass in mono. But I am not certain about the drums...
 
So, how do you record your bass and drums with the synths? Do you record some parts of drums (kick, snare) in mono and the rest in stereo? I have selected a preset from Addictive Drums, but now I am thinking of separating it by tracks, though it may take more efforts to tune everything...
 

Unless using instrument tracks. Splitting the instrument track provides access to the interleave button on the audio track.

Stereo tracks get frozen as stereo, mono as mono. They can be switched from one to the other using the track interleave button as savoy says.

Recording drums is a huge topic on it's own.

If I were recording a real kit I'd be inclined to start by considering using the Glyn Johns method. Just four mics positioned for the best sound and fewest phasing issues. Assuming the kit's well balanced for volume and tuned of course - if it isn't that needs sorting out before any tracking gets done whether there's one mic involved or 20+. If the drummer isn't well balanced for volume, that's a different matter :-)

Drum soft synths/samplers don't offer that method, and the mic placement is wherever it was when the sample was recorded, so I generally "track" each part of the kit separately in mono. Maybe put the toms through a stereo channel, maybe the cymbals, but treating each individually and routing them to sub-group stereo aux tracks which then route to a drum bus works for me. It makes doing surgical eq to remove narrow-band resonances much easier. I usually pretty much ignore the sampler's "built in" mixer and effects and just handle the outputs like any other audio.

Drum machines I either track in stereo or each sound to its own track. Or the kick and maybe snare, claps and hats get their own tracks to make processing easier.

As for synths, which for me are mostly hardware, generally I track them in mono even if they have a stereo out. That way the track can control stays as a pan, not a balance control. Unless I've a compelling reason to track one in stereo - e.g. my MicroQ has two filters which can be placed in parallel and panned differently plus its own effects so it gets tracked in stereo, or sometimes I might decide to sequence a synth's stereo pan so some notes come out panned differently to the rest.

Whatever seems like the best idea at the time basically.

Again, the interleave button is only available on audio tracks. Instrument tracks must be split to gain access to the underlying audio track and its interleave button. The split instrument function is in the Track View Tracks menu https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Views.03.html and the context menu in the track header.

Don't worry about interleave. When you initially insert and route your bass instrument, select a mono output as your audio track's input. SONAR will automatically set the interleave to mono, and when frozen it will remain mono. Any stereo soft synth will give you the option of taking output from just one side of the stereo pair.
 
There are cases where this could lose some information, as when the synth's output genuinely needs to be stereo because the left and right channels are significantly different. But that is usually not the case for a bass, or a bass drum, or a snare drum. For those types of sources it's perfectly safe to use just the Left or just the Right output of the synth/sampler.
 
Also note that even if your source is mono and your interleave is mono, you can still end up with a stereo frozen track. This will happen if you use any stereo effects on the track, which forces SONAR to switch to a stereo interleave after the effect. Make sure you only use mono effects on mono sources.

To reroute and existing instrument track would still require splitting the instrument track. After splitting the track, setting the track input, the interleave would still be in stereo. By design, recent versions of SONAR no longer automatically change the interleave when audio inputs are changed.
 
The same is true when working with audio tracks in general. There is no longer a link between the audio input setting and interleave.

This bit is easy.
 
In Trck View, just right click the audio clip and select Convert to Mono, halfway down the list




That is exactly what I have done (see my post), but the topic is not about getting to mono from stereo...

Bristol_Jonesey
To go back to the earlier suggestions, this is where you can split an Instrument Track to Split Adui/Midi tracks which will give you access to the Interleave Button:
 
 
Just right click in the region below the buttons labelled "None" to get to this menu

Thank you.