One trouble (of mine?)

[Yura]

Hi to you all, Dears

My question concerns only of working with MONO files in MT of SS.

So, other people may not waste theirs time, who work with stereo only.
the stereo SAW' managenent has no any questions and it's very tratsparent in ever stage of internal manipulation and rendering.

In a second side, say, if you're recodring mono tracks from the live performances and your task is only to make a final stereo mix inside SAW - there is also no questions.
I offer to pay an attention for those who's task is the editing of mono tracks AND mixdowning them to next MONO tracks that are for some next production process (not without fall in SAW). I hope there are couple of men who do it.

in order to make no errors in understanding I describe the scheme.
the simplified example is you have a two mono files placed on two tracks and you must monitor them from the two different hardware outputs (Why not to monitor them mixed inside SAW? - bacause there's such a task for a concrete external purposes).

Setup=A

The setup may be: Track#1 pans full left and thus goes to H/W out#1
Track#2 pans full right and thus goes to H/W out#2

What problems? no any yet.
But just for being 100% sure, place the test sinus tones of - 6 dB on each of two tracks (mono files). and for sure again, place two external indicators (meters) or stereo one after the signal is out of your sound card. provide in correspondence them to neatly show -6 db when playback is on. Now we have control over our outgoing level.

imagine, our editing is done

As it was mentioned before, after our editing we have to mixdown each of two tracks to new two mono files.
So, we select track#1 and go to mixdown to new mono file. and the same with the second track.
OK. here the problem starts appearing.
Here is any of our new mono file. Place it on empty track (if you havn't done mixdown on hottrack option yet -no matter) Or simply place it on the correspondent track where its source entry is. When playbacks, we observe with our indicators that new file's amplitude is -12 dB.... We have lost 6 dB.
What wrong we'v done? If we would go such a way, if we need a next (double) rendering, we would lost 6 db again...

So we have to make a logical conclusion - our setup is wrong at some point.

The only point of this matter is the mono button with its options menu at the top of chn mixer. Our task is to came to the correspondence: If while editing process our track monitoring with level=A, we need after mixdown it to be with the same level=A. Is this correct?

Setup=B

So we go to mono button and make the change in our setup, switching it On with option L+R. Thus, now we monitor while editing with level=B, where B is 6 dB louder in compare to previous setup.
But after we will make a new mixdown of our mono track we notice the resulting mixdown now is LOUDER than we hope, when we place it to playback onto its corresponding track (The track of its source file)

Conclusions. We must monitoring our track(s) using setup A. But we must go to setup B - if we need properly gotten our mixdown of mono file.

Is that right (regarding of design)?

when we have much more mono tracks routed to many devices, we have to remember about any button before mixdown... And... when we need to make any track-bounceing in marked area (to free of plug or similar) we must not forget switch between Setups A and B.

Conclusion 2. Now its clear to me that if there could be "doubleing amplitude mechanism" exclusively for mixdown of mono files (in mixdown only) the problem of "keeping in mind between setups A and B" could be gotten away.

Very glad you were reading this till the end :)
What are your comments please?

Yours

[Bob L]

SAWStudio drops each side 6 db when converting the signal to mono so that perceived stereo image levels do not shift. You are free to punch the mono button in and out for phase checks with no perceived level increase when doing stereo mixes.

If you want to work in mono, everything again works fine when you mix virtually and mix to mono, since both sides drop, then add together again... giving the same level as the source.

Keep the pans in the center with mono files and the mono mix does not drop the 6 db as you mentioned.

The problem of doing separate hardware panned outputs is where you need to make a slight adjustment at mix time when mixing to mono... if the signals are panned completely to one side or another, and you want that signal back in the center as mono, when you do the mix, simply raise the out level 6 db before building the mix and the result will be what you are asking for.

Bob L

[Yura]

Bob, I filtered your last paragraph that is only conserning to the question I touch...


The problem of doing separate hardware panned outputs is where you need to make a slight adjustment at mix time when mixing to mono... if the signals are panned completely to one side or another, and you want that signal back in the center as mono, when you do the mix, simply raise the out level 6 db before building the mix and the result will be what you are asking for.


...Not truly understood... why we have to enter raising +6 db before buildmix. if we had already perfectly done our levels before.
In other words, why the engine builds the mix of mono with droped -6 db?
I only maybe understand one thing. When building mix with mono-file that is panned hard L(R) - it loses the half of its amplitude in new builded file...

If we do build mix mono->mono without panning we get exact equivalent in resulting file.
But logicaly, the proper right setup would be with pan hard L(R) bacause it corresponds to right hardware setup of pathing out of mono files.

Again, imagine you have to hear your mono sound exactly from one output of your card. this is only logical setup and you must have hard panned correspond. input track. For the most clarification I describe here one else more simpliest situation.

you have only 1 track with mono-wav to edit.
you have to direct it to ONLY (sorry for big) 1st output of your card
(because other outputs are extremely busy)
your work consists of: marking the small area of your track; applying some effects on this area; building the mix of this area to new mono-file or hottrack and replacing old chunk with new one.

What will you have... each time you have to need to raising the level 6 db up (as you mentioned before) before building the new chunk. and after replacing you have to return the level back. If you have to do the xx such of operations...

Can somebody show the way how to do this without that constant level manipulation?

[Bob L]

Yura,

Your situation is complicated by your hardware limitations... this is not the norm... the mono mixing is setup for the norm... in a special situation, sometimes special things have to be done to get the special results.

Why can't you simply leave the mono files panned in the center and then monitor only the one side hardware and mute the other side of the stereo pair soundcard outputs. Then your mixes would come out correctly. Or for that matter, why can't you designate the stereo pair to these mono signals and leave the pans in the middle while monitoring both sides.

Otherwise, setting up to do a build mix after all your edits and balanced levels is not such a big deal, in my mind, to simply raise the out track level exactly 6 db... you do not have to adjust any balances of tracks or edits any different... simply the out fader up 6db.

Then when the mix is done, put it back down... why is that such a problem?

Or work with pans in the middle. The output results will be the same as the mix... use other paired device outs for other signals if you need... just keep one pair for these mono signals while you work.

The level drops because you have one side with signal and another side with zeros... when the program blends them to mono, it drops each side 6db so the result is not louder, under normal two sided signal conditions. In this case, there is nothing to add back from the zeros side, so you are left with a 6db drop of the one side. If the pans were left in the middle, each side would drop 6db and then add back to the same when the two sides are blended together, resulting in the original signal level.

I do not currently include a routine to do a mono mix without the 6db drop... I may decide to include that in the futrure for these special situations... but not in place of the way it works now, which works perfect for most normal mixing situations. I know I will get hundreds of calls if I did it the other way with people complaining that their mix level went up 6db when they mixed to mono. :)

Bob L

[Yura]

Bob,
Well well well.
seems we grasp the thing a little.
If you please


Why can't you simply leave the mono files panned in the center and then monitor only the one side hardware and mute the other side of the stereo pair soundcard outputs. Then your mixes would come out correctly.

This would be absolutely perfectly, having no any troubles behind if ....alas,
this would be very... uneconomical, actually. Really, I had this idea before, but with my 8 analog + 8 ADAT there is a killing arithmetic. I would have only
8 H/W outputs with my project and setup critical to quantity of outputs.
I even ate-ate triking with 16... and if to propose to loose 1/2 of them....
it's very softly saying - non-economical.
So this is not suitable - all connections done and every output - worth its weight in gold.

What is the really principal: SAW is designed to route mono wavs exactly by panning them.

that is why I agree with yours described below:


Otherwise, setting up to do a build mix after all your edits and balanced levels is not such a big deal, in my mind, to simply raise the out track level exactly 6 db... you do not have to adjust any balances of tracks or edits any different... simply the out fader up 6db.

But I must beg your attention to one detail. Nobody worried aboud nothing till he has knocked by some hidden riff. I mean what:

The last good (and principally right) setup has a very dangerous point if you try to use it. I CANNOT RAISE UP THE OUTPUTS VOLUME TO +6db. like you said here.
Because, if there is wave at least -5.9 db on the correspondent track... it will be clipped.
By other words, I cannot make a deal with signals on tracks having an amplitudes higher then -6 db (!!!) . of course, if I want to do serial intermediate mixdowning (and that's why I've been always using limiters adjusted to -6.1db POSTFADER on each output track).

Conclusions again, without any theoretical discourses.

I have the setup for editing AND intermediate mixdowning of mono wavs.
In the reason of properly using of my hardware outputs (not to devide by 2)
I use each one output signal for each one output of my hardware.
1) when I do every intermediate mixdown - I must raise level up 6 db.
2) But before doing that, I must limit the signal(s) with the -6 db.
3) after each intermediate mixdown I must return that level back (if I dont do that next I will be monitoring my wavs with wrong +6 db level).

who can guess what hip of problems I had doing my last work during 3 months :o

The best I may hope is to never do the work with mono files going separated on the external mixer.
If I could do just the stereo music I could never start talk about strange things of +-6 db... Alas!


Have a joy!

[Bob L]

Yura,

Sorry to have missed this in my earlier post...

I forgot about the Mono switch options on the OUTPUT Track...

Keep your signals panned hard left... when building a mono mix, go to the OUT track and use the L-Only Mono option on the OUT track... that takes the left signal and places it on both sides coming into the Out module... when the mix is built and mono blended, the -6db is taken care of and the result is the exact level as the source L-Only mix.

Bob L

[Yura]

Thank you very for your attention on this subject, Bob.

I'll check it out soon.(still didn't)


Yours

[Yura]

Yes it really frees me from a misgiving of overclipping signals higher -6 db.
In any case, while mixdown it simplifies the task and limiters aren't needed.

So, now before each intermediate mixdown I go to output channel(s) and enable the Mono L(R) switch. After mixdown I disable it.

In any case half of the trouble is gone!


Thank you for your constant help. Sometimes it's much more then 911 :)


Yours!