Another question, I remember reading somewhere that SONAR X does not support true MONO, that is, changing the interleave button sums the right and left... if I record a MONO track, how do I get this to play back in true MONO?
 
It could be my imagination but I am thinking that when I center the MONO track the way it is, the instrument is NOT precise in the center and appears wider but I do admit this could be my imagination ever since I read about the true MONO thing?
 
Thanks in advance for any help,
 
Jim
 

Sonar supports mono. There is no such thing as true mono. Its either mono or its not. 

i think we need a baker to clarify, there's definitely some confusion over how sonar processes mono stuff, eg, http://forum.cakewalk.com/Sonar-Stereo-Mono-Interleave-Signal-Path-m2206059.aspx and here's a nice article on the stereo tools from craig http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul09/articles/sonarworkshop_0709.htm

It only gets complicated when you have a stereo recording and you switch the interleave to Mono. A mono recording through mono interleave is mono. There's nothing to worry about.

As an aside, I think people often have unrealistic expectations of what stereo positioning is. There are two precise positions in a stereo field - hard left and hard right. After that, the phantom centre image should be reasonably precise, as long as your room and your monitors are set up right, and you're in precisely the optimum listening position, but even that is kind of an illusion. Every other position has varying degrees of ambiguity.
 

Sonar does handle mono tracks differently than Cubase (eg).  This is why, when you use UAD plugins, you have to use a specific mono-only plugin to conserve DSP on mono tracks - not the case in Cubase.  I believe the same applies to native effects, with no effective workaround.
 
Here are a couple of places online where this issue is discussed:
http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=4667
http://uadforum.com/general-discussion/13059-no-mono-versions-la2a-plugins.html
 
My impression is that when Sonar has a mono track, it pretty much just inputs the left side of a stereo track, and then only plays the audio output from that side.  I suspect it causes other problems as well, as some plugins seem to expect to see only mono or only stereo audio.

Long time and well known Sonar issue.. I dont believe any of the other "major" daws suffer from..could be wrong
 
In any event - time for the bakers to fix this and put the issue to bed - overdue,,,agree?

I thought that something was going weird.... UAD just returned the MONO plugs with version 7 which required a clean install (deinstall and reinstall) in order to accommodate the STEINBERG folder non option install.
 
I also have a weird problem with playing back an audio track in MONO (it is a MONO audio track) in that the panning is very odd.... I have the output going to a BUSS and the buss is stereo... the mono audio track doesn't pan as expected?  Wonder if this is also related to the true MONO issue?
 
Jim

If a track doesn't seem to be panning as expected, it's always good to check for stereo FX somewhere in the chain.
 

The problem with mono discussions is that the arguments are always one sided ;)
(Apols in advance)...