How Does One Make A True Mono Track?

I am recording from softsynths and hardware synths (not sure that matters), but my kicks and bass I like to be true mono.

Setting Interleave=Mono is not really mono because it is a stereo track interleaved into mono.
 
I remember back in Sonar 8 you can choose either a stereo or mono track.  If you chose mono, you would only see 1 centered waveform in track view, not 2 for L/R.

Thank You,
Adam

czyky
In the track properties panel of an audio track, open the dropdown list under inputs and select ONE of the channels of your sound card (stereo is selected by default). You have a mono track and the display updates to a single wav image accordingly.
 
Alternately, if you have a stereo audio track, you can bounce it to a mono track.

Interesting, but what if you have a stereo track with different information in L/R, but just want to mono-ize the track.

Is setting it up for "Interleave=Mono" acceptable or does that do something strange to it?
 
I am unsure what Interleave is actually doing.

Thank You!

Understood, thank you.
If I have a patch with some stereo information though, is it acceptable or OK to just use the Interleave=Mono option?  this way I am capturing the differences between the L and R channels or does this do something unwanted to the audio?

No I don't think it does anything 'unwanted' to the audio.
 
As an aside:
You can also bounce the track to 'Split Mono' - creating 2 bounced mono tracks (L and R).
Tracks > Bounce to Track(s)
Source Category: Tracks
Channel Format: Split Mono
 

KPerry
Or use the Channel Tools plug-in to select the channel to use dynamically.

would that be preferred over the interleave option?

Channel Tools is better than panning?
How would you make a track mono in Channel Tools?

Channel tools is neither better nor worse than panning. It does a different job.

With the master bus in stereo, when you pan a mono track (or bus) away from the centre the sound's location moves left or right in the audio field.

If you pan a stereo track in the same way something different happens. The stereo track has information in the left and right channels, which are two mono tracks, one panned hard left and the other hard right. Any information in, say, the centre of the stereo field is because they both share that information at the same volume level.

You can not use the pan control to control a stereo track's apparent centre position because in this case the pan will only make either the left or right channel of the pair louder. So the apparent centre may move, but any audio the left and right channels don't have in common will get louder or quieter depending which way you pan and this will alter the sound. For example, a ping pong delay would gain volume on one side and loose it on the other so causing a difference in volume level of the repeats but not their apparent location in space.

So if you want to take, say, a stereo synth pad, with different things happeneing in the left and right channels, and move its apparent centre location off to either side panning won't work. That is where channel tools and similar plugins come in. Channel tools can take a stereo source and make its stereo spread narrower (or wider) but still stereo, and also allow you to then move the spread's centre around the stereo field. Channel tools can do this without reducing the stereo track to mono so it still has "width", while a mono track sounds like it comes from a single point.

The easiest way to understand this is to set up a stereo track and feed it a synth patch that has different content in the left and right channels then put a ping-pong delay in the track fx bin. Or to import a stereo mp3 song. Then try panning it around and see what happens and also experiment with channel tools.

As for "unwanted" alterations made by track interleaving, all track interleaving to mono does is mix left and right channels together in exactly the same way as if you had two mono tracks and, without moving their faders from 0, fed them into a mono bus. The relative volumes of the two source tracks isn't altered. In DAWs stereo tracks are really two mono tracks, one panned hard left the other hard right, that are combined by the software into a stereo track for our convenience so we don't have to set up the routing and control grouping to keep both mono tracks operating as a stereo pair ourselves.

Whether you output only one side of the synth to a mono track, or output both sides to a mono track, really depends on the patch and whether or not it collapses well to mono. For instance if the patch has some kind of stereo widening effect like a stereo chorus effect which sounds weird in mono, just output one side of the synth to a mono track - you won't be losing any important part of the sound (except the stereo effect, which you're making a conscious decision to sacrifice anyway by monoizing it). 
 
If however the two sides of the synth patch are different enough that they are completely mono compatible, you would be losing a lot by ditching one side, so you should output both sides to the mono track. For instance you might have a patch in which left and right use different oscillators, different pitches or are being modulated rhythmically by two different LFO's. In this case the differences between left and right are integral to the character of the patch and should be preserved. 
 
 

Switching to M/S mode and reducing the side volume under channel tools. I also use VSL Powerpan which graphically allows you to reduce the stereo width and reposition the track in the centre if need be.