I’m trying to set the pan of a short selection of a mono track (to far left, then back center for the rest of track). I go to ‘Edit’ > select ‘Volume pan drawing’, draw the pan change, but when I follow to ‘Apply track effects/envelopes’, ‘Pan envelope’ is ghosted/not available; only ‘Volume envelope’ and ‘Track effects’ are offered.
Applying this same procedure to a track originally recorded as stereo, ‘Pan envelope’ IS available, and the edit works fine.
On the track mixer, there is a mono/stereo toggle per track, but this appears to only mono-ize a stereo track – not make a mono track into a stereo track.
Is there some trick here to achieve a pan envelope edit of a mono track? (or) Can the mono track be made stereo, that is (basically) two identical mono tracks, which could then be edited?
After you have drawn the pan envelope, you don’t need to use the “Apply track effects/envelopes” command. That’s only used to apply the envelope destructively, i.e. ‘print’ it into the wav file. n-Track disables the pan option on mono tracks because the “Apply track effects/envelopes” doesn’t change the number of channels (i.e. stereo/mono) of a wav file so pan doesn’t make sense.
“Apply track effects/envelopes” is something that you do for special cases, normally you just draw the envelope and press the Play button, n-Track will apply the envelope during the playback in realtime.
YES! Since your response I have experimentally created multiple different pans, some with rapid swings, to learn this, and it works and works well. I see that the virtual pan knob on the track mixer does not acknowledge these programmed pans, and remains at its static setting - so to keep tabs on the pan envelopes and modify them, one must recall the pan drawing option from the Edit menu, and they appear where they were drawn. So that’s cool.
I did my first multi-tracking in the early '70s on my Dad’s stereo Sony 355 R-to-R 1/4" tape deck with ‘Sound on Sound’ (!), so I am old school, and sometimes feel more akin to Les Paul with his early Revox than a computer-based recording format. Understand that when I saw both ‘draw’ and ‘apply’ within the Edit menu, it seemed logical that the one need follow the other.
Thanks again for the clarification, Flavio. Have a slice or two on me.
a few cool tricks for getting a stereo sound from a mono track: clone track, pan to opposite sides and offset the two by 1-2 128th’s of a measure on the grid. you can also simply phase shift one of the tracks if you are sending them straight to master and if you are bussing them you can phase shift the group. all of which is done from your equalizer window. just be careful as doing this can become tiring to your ears and brain if its too drastic. sounds cool in short bursts and you can also use it for a single stero track such as a solo and its not so bad. adds a lot of space between the cans
