Hi
I have a bass track using a VSTi via midi but it seems to be in stereo as opposed to mono.
Any way to get midi tracks to play in mono as well as render in mono?
Thx
You are limited to what the VSTi can output. If the VSTi has no control to change from stereo to mono, you are stuck. As far as rendering goes when you do a mixdown just check the mono box instead of stereo.
I do wonder why you don’t want stereo, which generally sounds a lot better than mono. But there’s probably a stereo-to-mono plugin somewhere, which sums the two sides and then passes the sum on both L & R channels. MDA is good about little widgets like this, maybe they have one.
Or, as Bubba pointed out, when you render the VSTi to wave you can just check “mono” and bingo you’re good.
All VSTi tracks in n-Track are stereo tracks. If your purpose is to use a plugin that only works on mono tracks, you’ll have to render to mono wave first and apply the FX on the wave track.
MDA Image will let someone center up stereo into a mono type sound. (does lots more - widening - panning) But in the end the track is still stereo unless it’s rendered as a mono wave.
If the desire is for it to SOUND mono then MDA Image is one ticket.
There is no way to make a stereo track be played as mono on a track basis, like a reverse of "Expand mono track to stereo"
That might be a nice (though esoteric) feature — it’s only good use might be so mono only effects can be used on stereo tracks. That said there aren’t many mono only effects and in the end the formerly stereo track will be mono. The main real reason for something like this would be so this could be done in non-destructive realtime (which I personally like).
A more useful (though still esoteric) feature might be a way to treat stereo waves as two mono tracks without having to actually separate the stereo file into two mono files. Individual panning of left and right tracks has been something requested in the past – that would be a side effect of this kind of feature. The other would be a way to have different effects on the separated track. This kind of thing can be easily accomplished now with subgroups though, so it’s sort of implemented already.
I don’t think either idea would be very high on a new feature list.
LearJeff
The reason I dont want stereo for this particular track is because its a bass track much the same reason why I want the lead vocal dead center and mono.
Thanks for the tips guys. I figured I might have to render the track to audio and split the stereo. Convoluted approach but little choice. 
In that case, MDA Image is the trick.
http://mda.smartelectronix.com/effects.htm
I use it for mid-side technique. But that’s a whole nuther lecture. 
Thanks…Ill check it out. MDA plugs has gotten a lot of good word everywhere.
Alternatively, mixdown just that one track to a mono wav and import it back into N-track. Mute and minimise the original track “just in case”.
This method requires extra steps but saves on having another plugin.
HTH
Mark
EDIT: Oh, Learjeff already kinda said that further up.
I find that MDA plugs are great for the simple widgets that don’t involve sophisticated math. For example, their compressors (which shouldn’t be terribly complex) sound terrible, especially the multiband.
I get the impression that they just code the DSP algorithms the obvious ways given the analytical forumula. Code like that basically works but breaks down in a lot of cases because intermediate results go to nearly zero or nearly infinity. This kind of thing is no problem when doing math analyticially (i.e., on paper using symbols without crunching actual numbers) but wreak havoc when crunching numbers. This is why good DSP code isn’t cheap – it takes a lot of work and insight (not to mention math skills) to hunt down the problem cases and adjust the code to compensate, while still running efficiently.
I have used MDA “combo”, which is their speaker emulator, and if you have nothing else, it’s great – well worth the price of $0! Their stuff is always worth a try; just don’t expect fabulous results from complex plugins.