any technical tips insights here? doing a mono down mix off the stereo mains seems to result in a clipped file.
Changing pan law for mixdown will most likely change you mix, so - not at all.
Mixing down two channels with an identical signal to mono will result in a doubling of volume level, which corresponds to a 6dB increase for voltage levels.
So I ˋd lower the master fader or last insert processorˋs level by at least that amount, or - depending on what I use the file for - mixdown with 32 bit floating point resolution.
Because you count up two channels into one, sure doubles the power amount and get spiking going on. Wavelab has a feature that i believe reduces the power by -6 db towards the mono file creation.