OK - This involves Battery 3, but is really centered around setting up audio tracks in Sonar for stereo/mono.
 
For real drums, I understand the notion of setting audio tracks for each drum that has a single mic as mono.  No problem.  When dealing with a drum synth, however, and setting audio tracks for each kit piece as either stereo or mono:
 
I use Battery 3 for drums, and as it is the default, have been using stereo channels for individual drum cells, where each drum cell was assigned to a different stereo output channel (1/2, 3/4, etc).
 
Battery 3 defaults to stereo output for channels 1/2 for all cells, and even defaults to output an individual cell to a stereo output channel with its list of output channels presented for individual cell routing.  (I know there is a button for switching it to mono, but they decided for some reason to default it to stereo)
 
And yet, I keep reading that drums recorded with one mic should have their track set to mono. (which makes sense).  In addition, in Battery 3, out of all the factory-provided kits, only 2-3 of them have any drums that use multiple mics for any of the drum cells.
 
Now, I currently have each drum cell routed to its own stereo output channel in Battery 3 - and then in Sonar I have a separate stereo audio track for each corresponding output channel used for the kit pieces in Battery 3.
 
So, question 1 is: Should I change the default of Battery 3 so that it uses mono outputs for when I individually route each drum cell of a given kit to its own output channel?
 
Question 2 is: Should I set the corresponding audio tracks in Sonar, for each individually-routed drum kit piece from Battery 3, to mono?
 
I am about to set up a bunch of track templates, and custom drum kits, and would like to get all of this set up once - correctly.
 
Bob Bone
 

Do you use any effects processing inside Battery eg reverb. Often the reason why they provide stereo outputs for a single drum sound is to keep the effects in stereo.  If you are not into using effects at all then perhaps you could consider the outputs being mono instead.
 
Are the OHeads in stereo. If so I would keep that part of the kit in stereo for sure.

I'm using BFD3 for my drums but the principle is the same.
 
Use mono tracks for all of your spot mics and stereo for the Overheads, Room & Ambient mic pairs.
The clue is in the word "pair"

Slightly off-topic, but it may be worth noting that earlier versions of Battery 3 used to have both stereo and mono output channels. As I recall, 1-16 were stereo pairs and 17-24 were mono. After one of the latest updates, there are now 16 stereo pair outputs numbered 1-32.
 

I do not use any effects in Battery 3 - would rather apply those within Sonar, and in Sonar those would be placed on the appropriate bus, rather than on a track level.
 
As far as overheads - these kits don't have cells that I have seen where any mics are mentioned, except for the 2-3 that explicitly indicate use multiple mics, and I don't use those.  When I load a drum kit in Battery 3, each cell corresponds to an individual kit piece, such as left snare, right snare, kick, crash 1, etc.  There are no settings I see for dealing with microphones used for any particular kit pieces, and nothing for the whole kit, such as overheads or room mics.
 
So then, I will set up all cells for the custom drum kits I am building in Battery 3 to use mono for each cell's output channel routing, and create mono audio tracks for all of the associated kit piece outputs from Battery 3.
 
THANKS for the replies - it confirmed what I had thought should be the case.  I will be setting up a bunch of custom drum kits in Battery 3, with each kit piece for each kit routed to its own mono output, and will be creating a whole bunch of drum templates for Sonar, which in addition to having separate audio tracks for each kit piece, will also already have basic levels set, as well as panning, track and bus icons, track/bus colors, all the buses (drums master, parallel compression, toms, cymbals, etc.), and all will be in a track folder.
 
TOO cool!
 
Bob Bone
 

Sounds like a good plan Bob!
 
The more I delve into BFD3, the more I'm impressed with both the range & quality of the bundled presets.
Up until now, I've done all of my drum mixing inside Sonar with each drum on it's own track (and stereo outs for OH/Room) but for my next project, I'm planning to load up a suitable preset and do it all inside BFD.
The range of Fx on offer are now, IMHO, on a par with many of the plugs that come bundled with Sonar and they have really taken the pain out of trying to get a "good" drum sound.
No doubt the preset will need tweaking to taste but that's a small price to pay when you consider the benefits: not having to worry about setting up many tracks along with their routing, deciding which plugins to use and adjusting each one to taste, the ergonomic benefit of only having a stereo pair to worry about in Sonar.
You can of course load up a kit independently to the mixer, so if I want to apply the Fx from one preset, it's easy to load up a different kit.

Hi, first post to the forum.
 
Great stuff here. Just upgraded to X3 Producer (from Studio version) and trying to get my head around AD2. The outputs section looks weird to me. Stereo outs have strange config such as BD on left and Snare on right, Hi-Hat and Tom1 on anaother pair. However, mono outs gives you everything in mono so that you end up with 2 entries in Console view for Overheads, 2 for the room mics, etc.
 
I would like to know how you guys handle that?

Rather than leaving all the AD tracks as mono, change the input on one of the overhead and room tracks to stereo and delete the other overhead and room mono tracks.

Thx!
 
That was just too simple! Of course the solution was in SONAR  and not in AD. 
 
BTW, this AD2 stuff looks and sounds really good. Much better than SD, at least to my ears. Now I need to build some drum maps and track templates for it so I can expedite the technical work faster and focus on music when inspiration strikes.

I only have AD, but a forum member (subjacent) posted a zip file in 2013 with drum maps and templates. The drum map will probably work fine, but the template is mapped to AD.

On my phone here, so is nigh impossible to search/link it for you.