jimkleban
Billy Buck,
I use to do this with MONO instances as well, then I read some where on the official UA site that this issue was addressed by their software implementation and no longer need to use the MONO plugs.
Hey Jim,
The latest versions of SONAR/UAD still use DSP according to the actual version used (stereo or mono)
on a particular track. Not sure of any other software implementation aspect being fixed, as I always use mono versions on mono tracks and stereo versions on stereo tracks. But the DSP savings is still applicable. I do the same thing in REAPER and Mixbus as well. Those two apps you do need to use the appropriate versions as there are other related performance issues, in addition to the DSP savings.
In the screen capture below, I have two mono tracks. The top one I inserted a stereo UA610 and the bottom one the applicable mono version. In the UAD Control Panel|Hardware pane you can see the stereo version is using the full "stereo" DSP load of 44.8% (DSP 1) on a mono track, while simply inserting the "mono" version the DSP drops down to 23% (DSP 2). That is reason enough for me to use the mono versions. In a project using dozens of UAD plug-ins, the DSP savings can be quite significant.
Cheers,
Billy Buck