• Features

  • Multitrack - Dual-Mono for stereotracks

I have become a big fan of ST3. I have had a couple of gigs already using ST3 for backtracks - in combination with lyrics it works fantastic 🙂
I use multitracks, and feed each track to different channels on my mixer for soundguy to fine adjust balance.
My wish is to be able to mark a stereo track as "dual mono" - and be able to adjust both left and right of the individual stereo file (in my case mp3) instead of having a volume and a PAN.
Here's my reason:
In a very simple setup I have

  • click-track - left channel is click only for count-in (and long guitar intros before drummer joins etc). Right is full click
  • Bass/Guitar track. Left is BASS and right channel is GUITAR.
  • Drums. Full stereo image.

If for some reason the soundguy finds that the guitar is ALWAYS to loud on a particular song, it would be nice to adjust the level in ST3. But since guitar is right-channel in a Bass/Guitar stereo track, this must be done with the PAN control, which makes it difficult to control with confidence. (Also, if Pan-law also affects the bass-side, it is quite difficult to get a good result).

Having seperate volume control for BOTH left AND right channel would make such adjust very easy. This is what i mean by "Dual mono".

As an add-on: If the audio routing would allow to recognize that a track is "dual mono", it would be nice to route left and right side independently. This would make a fantastic product even more convincing.

Tx for a great product

I guess the way forward is to allow more individual tracks. Then you would not need to use dual mono files and could stick to mono files.

    Well yes - but not quite -

    I have found that when exporting stems from Cubase to mp3 files, the files generated for a given track is the same if it is a mono track or a stereo track. That means that 2 mono tracks in mp3 takes double the space of a single stereo track.
    In other words, it seem to be more space efficient to have 2 mono tracks in a stereo track than 2 individual tracks. On 64 GB iPad (effectivly having 30Gb available, that can make a significant difference...

    I may be missing something when exporting stems from cubase - but this is the result I have gotten so far...

      peter I guess the way forward is to allow more individual tracks. Then you would not need to use dual mono files and could stick to mono files.

      He only needs 5 tracks , he has got 8 tracks , his problem sounds like he lacks physical outputs to achieve what he wants , I have just tested the multitrack routing with an XAIR 18 , I loaded ST3 with all 8 tracks in stereo and setup each stereo track to a mono channel from st3 track 1 to 8 and all these tracks appeared on my Xair from ch 1 to 8 in mono which is one option of ST3 outs, now if I wanted one particular track like his drums to remain in stereo I would then use ST3 other out option to seperate this stereo signal to two different channels which can be linked for stereo use.
      So the outcome is that everything you need is already there for you in software but you need the appropriate external hardware to achieve your goal, if you have a 4 Chanel mono device you are lacking one more input unless you run your drums in mono.
      ST3 is not your problem.

        Flemming If storage space is your only issue, you can add the same stereo audio file into 2 tracks (this will not take up twice the space). Then pan one track left and one track right and route each track to a separate mono output. Now you have independent volume control of both sides of the stereo file.

            peter Brilliant! It adresses both my challenge and my concerns (which was storage) - thanks a lot !!