Hello Team! I have a quick basic question that has been bothering me for a bit but I thought of bringing up to see if you guys can help me. So here it is….I never for the life of me could figure out why when I render in place a mono track such as my voice it would bounce to stereo. I have tried using all the settings in render in place but it always comes up as stereo. I did a search online and it tells me that it is stereo because the destination of where is going is stereo such as the main out. However, isn’t all the channels go to the stereo bus if you don’t have a bus prior to the stereo bus? So does this mean that I have to always set a mono bus before render in place so I can get by mono tracks bounced correctly? TY for you help Team on this!
The original track when created may have been a stereo one fed by a mono input.
That would render to stereo consisting of two identical mono tracks.
Hippo
Hello Hippo,
Ty for answering my question. Unfortunately, this is a mono track from a mono source. I made sure that this is the case. 
Hi,
my guess is that you confuse
- Audio/Bounce Selection
- Edit/Render in Place
- File/Export/Audio Mixdown.
Bounce and Render will keep the format of the original track (Mono => Mono etc) whereas Audio Mixdown will export your mono track and create a stereo track - depending on your output which is presumably a Stereo Out in your case. This makes perfectly sense since the desired output is a stereo track.
It’s still a mono file because the information in the left and right channels are identical. Even if you split the left and right channel, they would still both be the same.
It is definitely a bit goofy how Cubase handles this. I agree with your expected Cubase behaviour in these specific circumstances considering that these files can confuse the user in the future as to whether they contain mono or stereo information in them.
The only solution I can think of is to do a additional process of splitting the audio file in the audio pool or with the audio mixdown afterwards, which is a clunky workaround.
Hopefully Steinberg addresses this at some point.
in render options do a dry render otherwise you are rendering thru a virtual stereo mixer & why you get a stereo file
Yes, a mono signal will remain a mono signal with regard to their left/right channel information. I think in this case the OP was asking for ways of keeping a mono track as a mono track in general. But I totally agree, this can be confusing.
Good point - as soon as you leave the channel itself and include any additional paths (in the dialog window behind the green line) then you’ll add potential non-mono information to the track.
FWIW: I still think that the OP might have accidently confused Bounce, Render and Mixdown 
Hello Reco29….ty for suggestions. I don’t think I am confused here….all I am doing is rendering in place a mono track such as my voice and it comes out as stereo. Even if I choose a dry signal from the render in place menu, it still comes out as stereo which I can’t explain for the life of me. This can be such a confusing thing in Cubase.
I always choose the dry signal and it still comes out as stereo. I can’t explain why this happens.
Guys, the track still comes out as stereo and not mono even if you choose the dry signal.
Are you absolutely sure that the channel is mono? The actual channel, and not the audio material?
I just did a quick test in Cubase 14.0.40 and this is the result:
We can definitely have a discussion about whether this behaviour is ideal 
@RuneBorup
Good point!
But it is what I would expect.
I think that is a reasonable point - if you know how the feature is implemented - but maybe it needs an option in the render dialog. Cubase allows you to mix content of any width on whatever type of channel, which is great. More often than not, i’m running mono content on stereo tracks (because of stereo plugins), but this leaves a gap in the feature, if you want to preserve your “content width” for whatever reason .. so perhaps an option to force a specific width would be nice.
In the case of OP, i would probably use ‘Bounce selection’ instead, but this has a few quirks of its own to be aware of.
Hello RuneBorup,
Ty for making this video….this is exactly my issue. If you noticed the first time you did the render in place it went from mono to stereo which is the issue that I am having. However, you pressed a button prior to render in place for the 2nd time that made it mono. What is that button you’re pressing for this?
It’s the “mono / stereo toggle” button. Looks like “o” when it’s mono and “oo” when it’s stereo. If it’s not visible, try opening the track controls settings via right-clicking on the track and add it from there. It’s listed as “Channel Configuration” ..
The Render-in-place function will produce a new track with the same output as the original track, so you can temporarily switch it to mono. But -as i wrote, if all you want to do is consolidate the clips on the track into a single clip, i would use “Bounce selection” instead of render in place.
I never knew that switching the track to a Mono track prior to rendering was required to retain the audio file in mono, thanks for sharing.
Ty for your response RuenBorup….this solved my issue. I will use the channel configuration button prior to rendering in place and use bounce selection instead of render in place in some circumstances. Ty once again.