i'm new to protools le...and i have a question about stereo tracks.

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ghetto3jon

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i'm been playing with protools free for a little while, and i'd lke to get the mbox...but i've noticed that with protools free, stereo tracks tracks take up two tracks. this means that its 8 possible tracks are only 4 possible stereo tracks.

the mbox comes with pro tools le, which can handle 32 tracks...does this mean 32 stereo tracks, or only 16 stereo tracks?

sorry about the newbie question...but any help will be appreciated.
 
Typically in the "real" world, you're not going to run into stereo tracks very often. A stereo track is really just two mono tracks, and working with them in a mix is awkward. When you see total number of tracks, you'll almost always be looking at total MONO tracks.

Slackmaster 2000
 
So what that means is 16 stereo tracks, or 32 mono tracks. But there should not be many things you record in stereo! Off the top of my head, the only things I can think of for stereo recording:
  • drum overheads
  • group background vocals
  • "room" mics for the drum kit
  • environmental background noise for film or ambient music (and even that is usually mono)
  • a group vocal ensemble, string ensemble, or other instrument ensemble
  • symphonies or other classical congregations
Even when you are recording two tracks of something, for example, say recording an acoustic guitar with two mics, one at the 12th fret and one at the soundhole, you really want to record this as two MONO tracks... if you make it one stereo track, you are then constrained to make the same volume changes to each track, and the panning (though not impossible to change) is automatically set to hard left/right, when what you really want is to come up with some sort of customized blend...
 
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