Panning disappears when I bounce or export as mono

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malgovert

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Good morning



I’m facing a problem for which I need an urgent solution, as I have a mastering session booked for next week and the engineer needs the final mixes today. Everything is fine in terms of the music and tracks themselves, but the problem I am facing is this: when I mix down the entire song (using bounce to tracks) in SonarX2, it’s fine if I bounce as a stereo track, but if I bounce as mono I lose all panning – everything is moved to the center. All other effects are retained. Worse, the same thing happens when I export as a mono wav file. Again, if stereo, no problem. Never happened before, and cannot find a solution anywhere. Appreciate any advice or ideas! Thanks a lot.
 
That's what a mono file is: the exact same signal coming from the left and right sides. You're always going to lose all panning info when rendering down to a single mono file. If you want to retain panning, then you'll have to render to a stereo file.
 
malgovert said:
Never happened before, and cannot find a solution anywhere.
Click to expand...

What do you mean it never happened before? The only way it never happened before is because you never did a mono bounce before.

Mono is always mono. Same exact thing coming out of left and right speakers. This makes it sound like it's coming from the center. Of course all your other effects such as reverb, etc will still be there.

A stereo mix/bounce is distinctly different sounds coming out of left and right speakers.
 
Well I don't know, but I never took stereo wav files to the studio before and they always retained the panning effects - I was listening to one from the last session last night. If you open it up you see one strip of audio, not two, so it's mono, right? Mono to me is one audio clip instead of two within the same track, but within that one strip you can have different sounds situated in different areas of the mix. If other fx are retained why should the panning for the individual tracks not be?
 
You're talking about individual tracks right? OR, are you talking about a full mix??

Let's say you have a lead guitar in a mix. You have only one, as you call it "strip of audio" in there. So you have that panned to the left.
When it's bounced down to a final mix (in stereo) it will retain it's position in terms of panning.
If you bounce that to a mono mix, it will lose that pan position and you'll hear it straight up the middle.


So are you talking about stereo tracks or are you talking about stereo mixes?

In your first post you were talking about delivering a mono mix to your mastering engineer,

Maybe something is getting lost in the conversation, but I wonder why you would even want to send out a mono mix. Then I wonder why you are suprised with the fact there is no panning.
 
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malgovert said:
If other fx are retained why should the panning for the individual tracks not be?
Click to expand...

Panning isn't an effect. As Tadpui said, you lose all panning when you mix to mono, that is the definition of mono.
 
The stereo file has two wavefforts in it because one is for the left speaker and the other is for the right speaker. When you pan something, you are making it louder on one side than the other. In order for there to be any panning, you need the two.

Your post is confusing, because it sounds like you are spitting out individual tracks to take to the studio to be mixed, but you said that you were taking a mix to the studio to be mastered.

I don't know anyone who would take a mono file of a mix to a mastering engineer to create a final product. Are you sure you mean mastering, not mixing?
 
I wouldn't even bother with bouncing it - just do a File > Export of your mix and take that to your mastering guy.

The guts above are correct - once you render something as mono it will appear centred in your mix. You can still pan mono tracks L/R but to bounce the whole thing as mono?

You are definitely missing a trick here
 
This is really confusing. Everything you've been told is correct, there is no panning in a mono track. But why on earth woukd you be taking a mono track to be mastered? Mastering engineers work on the final mix, which is a single stereo track of the entire mix.
 
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