External Insert only work in Stereo in 8.3.1

I am using Allen & Heath R16, and I have worked out a way to utilize a channel on the mixer in such a way that I can have the track as an OUtboard EQ, but still send it to a bus.

Okay real world example, I have my kick track external insent plugin going out to channel 1 on the R16, this means any EQ setting will be applied to the kick, I then have the Kick tracks output in Sonar set to the drum bus, and the drum bus outputs to Tracks 7/8 as a stereo, ON the R16 i have the kick track disabled to the L/R Master. Ie you can only hear the kick via tracks 7/8 , THis effectively means that Channel 1 on the desk is acting as an external EQ on Kick trac, but I can compress the kick and the drum bus independantly.

HOwever the problem is that i am using Channel 1 of the A&H for external insert SOnar locks up channel 2 as the external insert locks the track to stereo. When I insert it into a mono track it turns the track stereo, which is naff in itself, but it also means that in the scenario of the mix routing I am trying whe i want to use 3 tracks on teh A&H luike outboard EQ I am actually losing 6 tracks. This is not on as I need them for other instruments.

So has the external insert always forced to stereo, is this something that crept in in version 8.3.1 what is going on and how do I sort it, because its really getting on my nerves. Its critical to how I want to work going forward so does this work better differently in SOnar x1?

I am afraid not, its not the ALlen & Heaths fault as I have tried it in Protools 9 and have managed to get the entire project set up and working exactly as I wanted. So the ball is back in teh SOnar court, I read somewhere on here earlier that Sonar version 7 the behaviour was not the same, so they fixed some issues with External insert and possibly messed this up by accident it happens.