Reference Guide

192
Controlling Playback
Track-by-track playback
SONAR has a Mono/Stereo button in each track module in the Track and Console views. The
buttons in the track modules force each track to play in either stereo or mono, but preserve the
tracks’ pan positions in the stereo mix.
The Mono/Stereo button in each track forces the track’s audio signal to enter any patched plug-ins
as either mono or stereo, whether or not the tracks are mono or stereo. This allows you to use either
mono effects on a stereo track or stereo effects on a mono track.
To use a track’s Stereo/Mono button
1. Display the Track view or Console view.
2. In the track you want to force to either mono or stereo for processing effects, click the Stereo/
Mono button to the desired position:
• Speaker icon pointing left. This choice means that you manually selected mono for this
track.
• Speaker icon pointing left and right (as pictured above). This choice means that you
manually selected stereo for this track.
Mono audio clips may be increased by 3 dB in certain scenarios
There are some situations where the level of a mono clip will be increased by 3 dB if the track's
output interleave (mono/stereo toggle) is set to mono:
1.If the track has mixed stereo and mono clips
2.The track has a synth selected as its input source
3.Input Echo is enabled or the track is armed for recording
In summary, whenever the track output interleave is mono and the data interleave is stereo, mono
data will be increased in level by 3 dB.
Using mono VST plug-ins on stereo tracks may cause out of sync audio
When using a mono plug-in on a stereo track (interleave set to Stereo), the left and right channels
will be out of sync. The left channel is processed by the mono effect, and delay compensation is
applied, while the right channel is not processed and does not have delay compensation applied.
The signal will look something like this:
• Left channel: Wet signal (delayed)
• Right channel: Dry signal (no delay)
Note: You may lose important stereo data by using mono effects with stereo tracks because
your stereo tracks are summed to mono in order to pass through the effect. If you never want
your stereo data to be summed to mono, select stereo.