Mono Stems playing on both Left and Right channels

Tenkisan

Greetings all. I’m at my wits end here. I’m new to MultiTrack songs using stem files. I’m learning as I go and just spent the whole weekend trying to crack the nut of using Mono Stems with ST3. My ultimate goal is to have Click Tracks and acoustic guitar audio panned Right (being sent to In Ear Monitors) and all other stem files panned Left for Front of House audio out of both Left and Right FOH speakers. I can’t get past testing on the iPad and home studio monitor speakers. I have tried with my own mixer setup as well but the results are the same so I’m doing something wrong somewhere when using ST3.

I have seven stems downloaded from Karaoke Version into Logic Pro X. I followed Scott Uhl’s backing track instructional video and things are great from within Logic Pro, but I’m running into a problem when I use them in ST3. Out of 7 Stems, I have a Click track stem and Acoustic track stem that I’ve bounced to Mono, then back to stereo (to get the pan feature back) with the channel panned Hard Right. I have the remaining stem tracks (Drums, Electric Guitar, Bass Guitar, Vocals and Piano) all bounced as mono then back to stereo and panned hard left. I’ve tried bouncing all seven stems as individual .wav files as well as a single MP3 file. When I play either the single MP3 file or the individual .wav stems using the Apple Music player on the laptop, they are panned correctly and I hear them from the correct speakers, the same is true from within Logic Pro X. I have imported these .wav stems into ST3 and assigned them to individual stem channels, setting their pans to the left or right as required. Here is where the problems start.

If I play the multi-track files from the iPad speakers or through Bluetooth monitor speakers, the audio is summed across both the left and the right speakers instead of being sent to ONLY left or ONLY right as required. If I pan the stem in the opposite direction, I.E. click track normally panned hard right, but now panned hard left, I lose all audio. This is somewhat expected since the stem was saved with audio panned hard RIGHT so if I pan hard LEFT, there shouldn’t be any audio.

I spend a little time in the forums trying to discover a fix but the closest comment was from Peter talking about selecting Headphone channels as either left or right under Settings>Audio Routing. My version 3.8.24 doesn’t have that option, only Combine USB and Headphones (I have it turned off) and Stereo Song Output. On this setting, I’ve tried Speaker, Speaker Left and Speaker Right but this doesn’t have any affect on the stem audio, it still comes from both the left and the right, even if panned hard right. In Multi Track Output, I’ve also tried placing the Right Panned stems in Track 1 Output and 2, then selecting Speaker (Right). It doesn’t matter what I do, the Stems I want panned hard right are still split and play in both the Left and Right speakers.

I have to be missing something simple. I’m thinking it might be an iPad issue so I will attempt to load ST3 on, and work from the Laptop when I get home from work tomorrow. That’s gonna be a lot of reworking my gig setup which I don’t really want to do. It should work from the iPad. Any help or suggestions will be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

peter

Stage Traxx only sums stereo tracks to mono when you send them to a mono output channel. Everything else stays in stereo.
In Settings > Audio Routing you can set a specific output channel for each track. Look closer, the option is there.
If you work with stereo files split hard left/right, you need to make sure to send them to a stereo output. If you select a mono output, they will be summed to mono.

Tenkisan

peter I bet this is EXACTLY what I’m missing. I’ll go back and check how I’m setting these stems up in Logic Pro X. I do remember bouncing stereo tracks to mono then back to stereo to get the pan option back, then choosing “output 1” as the output channel. That move right there might be where I’m goofing things up. I have a Focusrite 2i2 attached and this might be why I’m getting the Output 1 or 2 option for the track. Thank you for your help!

peter

For the 2i2 interface, you should see 3 output options: stereo (named after the device), left and right

Tenkisan

peter I’ve done some additional troubleshooting and I still have a problem. I’ve narrowed it down to playing the stems on the iPad. I went back to Logic Pro X, figured out where I was screwing things up and now I have stereo stems exported the proper way or stereo on both input and output. They even look like proper stereo wave forms with the audio only on the left or right channel depending on how the stem is panned within Logic Pro X. I’ve tried exporting these stems as AIFF, WAV and MP3 file types. When I play these stems on the laptop, they all play as expected. Stems panned hard right play from the right speaker etc. When I airdrop those files to my iPad, import them to ST3, they play as if they’re a combined stereo file, I.E. audio from both the left and the right channel when I have the pan slider all the way to the right. I get NO audio when the stem file is panned to the left. The same is true for all file types. It’s as if the process of airdropping somehow combines the stereo into a summed channel. It shouldn’t be doing that.

As I mentioned I would do before, I downloaded and installed the ST3 app on my laptop. I created a single multitrack song and imported stems into each stem slot. I started with one, when it tested good, I continued with all remaining stems. They all work as expected and I have channel separation as expected. These are the same files I’m airdropping to the iPad. I also tried a singe MP3 file with all stems combined into one file. This file, when copied into stem slot one plays all channels with the proper separation as expected. The Click and Acoustic only come from the right (they were panned hard right) and all other instruments, drums, electric guitar, piano etc., they all play from the left speaker, so as expected.

I saw what you were describing about the 2i2 from within ST3 on the laptop. I tried changing the sources from the laptop speakers, to external Bluetooth speakers and via the 2i2. I didn’t have to choose the Left or Right option because all file types worked with each source’s speaker option. On my iPad, it defaults to the Bluetooth monitors when they’re turned on and the iPad internal speakers when the monitors (or Bluetooth) are turned off. Both of those sources will play a summed version of every track I try to play, regardless of setting (Speaker, Speaker Left, Speaker Right).

I’m out of time to troubleshoot further today. Thanks for your suggestions.

peter

Post a screenshot of the audio routing page.

jaytrax

Scott Uhl is a great guy and posts a lot of valuable information

However his video on converting to mono and then converting back to stereo is for ability to pan a stereo track so you can have music on left click on right

If using multitracks
Highly recommend using stereo stems as provided by karaoke version . com as these are stereo tracks.

You can sum to mono on your mixer if necessary but note when Scott makes his tracks mono, the balance of the mix etc gets thrown out too and you need to rebalance instruments unnecessarily.

So in short, use the stems as they come from karaoke version
Upload to STage Traxx no conversions or making mono necessary

AnthonyB

I was also initially confused by Scott's video (and I love all Scott's videos) as I on-boarded my band's backing tracks; mostly because the UI had changed since he made that video.

I realised things had becomes simpler in the Audio routing UI than what I had seen in his video.

I am using Multitrack Songs.
I have a stereo backing track
I have a stereo click track and band cue track were the click track is panned hard left and band cues panned hard right.

It took me a moment to realise that all I had to do was take 2 stereo channels presented from my mixer (Behringer X32) and route my stereo backing track to the first stereo channel, and my stereo click/cue track to another stereo channel. In the latter (clicks/cues), the hard panning meant I was essentially getting my 2 mono tracks just the way I wanted for routing to relevant band members' in-ear monitors.

No messing around with mono stems, or splitting a stereo stem, or taking a stereo stem with hard panned info and routing to hard-panned channels in ST.

Tenkisan

I FOUND IT!! It was a setting buried within my iPad that was converting the stereo files to Mono. I went to Settings>Accessability>Audio and Visual. Here, about 1/3 of the way down, there’s a Mono Audio setting. Mine was turned on! Once I turned it off, I played the combined stem track MP3 file and I can now hear channel separation on the iPad! Now to incorporate that into my mixer setup. Whew!! I was about to go nuts!! Thanks to all who commented. I appreciate your help and input!!

peter

Oh, I didn't even know that there was a global mono override setting in iOS.

Tenkisan

peter Me neither. I had some free time at work so I typed the stereo to mono question in a browser search window. When I found a possible answer candidate, I couldn’t wait to get home to try it. Sure enough things work like they’re expected to now. I was successfully able to use ST3 with backing track stems through my gig setup! Love the option to customize each stem’s volume. A few more songs converted to multitrack and I’ll be ready for open mic night!! Thanks for all the work you do on this software Peter!! It’s my Number One!! Cheers!!

Damir

peter Oh, I didn't even know that there was a global mono override setting in iOS.

Same here, but that’s understandable , who the hell would put this feature under , accessibility, audio visual, this surely belongs under , audio settings, APPLE WOULD! These designers have no idea of how to make things logical and should have no input to the layout of things , Apple need to have dumb average users design the layout which would than be much more logical.
😂