• SONAR
  • Dana's Dumb Q. of the day: mono/stereo tracks and impact on stereo effects in the bin...
2014/01/18 23:50:56
Vastman
The more things I'm doing and exploring the dumber I realize I am...
I've read posts on mono vs stereo for guitar and other mono sources... however, I am playing around with Amplitude/Guitar Rig and realizeded they were only mono signals, not the beautiful stereo sound I'd get if I used them as a send to stereo returns... then discovered the "Dot" thingy (very nice) which indicates whether a bin effect is mono/stereo... and made a new Stereo guitar track... and Amplitude/Guitar Rig were in stereo...
 
So, to get the nice full stereo with sims, I need to have my guitar as a stereo track... ok... got it (or do a send)
 
So, I figured the same for my voice... but didn't recall that problem... and sure enough, Mono vocal, with FabFilter's Timeless gives me 2 dots from a mono source... ie, a stereo delay. just a/b ed it using as a bin effect or a send/stereo return... sounds the same....  I'M CONFUSED HERE...
 
1 Why? Mono guitar to ampsim equals mono yuckY sim sound but with vocals/timeless beautiful stereo...
 
2.As a general rule, since I love spacial things... I guess everything should be done in stereo for flexibility in effects bIn usage? or...
 
3. For mono vocals already done, are Sends to a stereo return the only real way to capture the stereo ambience of many effects? (still confused as Fab's Timeless retains stereo in a mono voice...it sounds the same in a bin or send, using a mono vocal)
 
4. I just tried taking a mono vocal track and moving it to a new stereo track... no go... so am I stuck mono? I can't see a way to convert a mono vocal to stereo for stereo bin processing...
 
OK, just found Bitflippers lengthy discussion.... boy! I think I'll just default to stereo as it doesn't seem you can get there from mono but can go the other way
2014/01/19 11:10:59
bitflipper
Vastman
OK, just found Bitflippers lengthy discussion.... boy! I think I'll just default to stereo as it doesn't seem you can get there from mono but can go the other way



If that's the conclusion you reached after reading my post, then I did a terrible job of explaining! (Which I suspected was the case as soon as I hit "submit".)
 
It may seem counter-intuitive, but as a general rule wide mixes are best served by mono tracks.
2014/01/21 16:01:41
jbraner
but you should also be able to hit the interleave button on a mono track - to change it to stereo if you want. then you can put stereo fx in the bin and process in stereo (even if the clip is a mono wav file).
2014/01/21 16:15:19
Vastman
Hey, John...thanks, I'll try that tonight... never even noticed that little button till reading others posts... "gots me" so much 2 still learn but it's exciting, more so each day now that I have the time to do so...
 
Figured there had 2b a way... it's like track templates... "don't know what chur missing till ya try it" ... to think of the countless hours I repeatedly wasted setting up kontakt and other things and now I click a template and...wow!
 
More time for songwriting and learning these exquisite tools...I luv it!
 
 
 
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