Stereo Plugins on Mono Tracks

Cubase
1

Hello All,
I’m a Logic user who has recently been using Cubase a lot more. It’s been a fairly smooth transition but I’ve ran in to a bit of a snag with something that Cubase handles differently and hopefully someone has an answer. Maybe there is something fundamental I am missing here.

In Logic, when I have a mono track I can instantiate a stereo plugin (or stereo version of a plugin) and it will convert the output of the track to stereo automatically with no other intervention. Certain plugins like the Brainworx bx_StereoMaker work differently when feeding mono content in to them. The Brainworx bx_StereoMaker will actually constrain the stereo and make it more mono when on a stereo track. This is obviously not what I am looking for.

In Cubase, when I put one of these plugins on a mono track I get unintended results. For example when using the bx_StereoMaker it seems like I may only be outputting the difference and there is a pretty big drop in volume because of it. At any rate I doesn’t appear that I am getting any stereo information out of the track. In the case of bx_StereoMaker it’s made to be fed a mono track and produce a stereo output. Simply feeding the output to a stereo group and using the plugin will not work as intended.

So my question is how is this handled in Cubase? It’s amazingly simple in Logic, all you have to do is instantiate the plugin. As I mentioned, maybe I’m just missing something. I’ve searched around and pretty much all I really saw was people duplicating the track and delaying a side to create a Haas effect, there are other advantages to doing this that go far beyond the Haas effect.

Thanks.

2

You can have a mono file on a stereo track. This will allow you to use stereo effects and output to a stereo bus.

3

Won’t that send a stereo signal to the plugin instead of a mono one? I’ll have to try that out later when I’m firing stuff up in the studio to see if it works.

4

Nope. You can even record from a mono bus to a stereo track. It doesn’t become a stereo file until you decide that is what you want. By doing a mixdown through your stereo output bus, for example.

5

Thanks for the info. Much appreciated.

I much prefer the way Logic handles this. It’s much more intuitive, takes less steps, and keeps everything cleaner in the interface.

6

Many users requested this. Simply changing the track configuration from mono to stereo or any multichannel format would be nice indeed :wink:

Still the only chance to get there is to create a new stereo channel and copy the settings. It’s a workaround that can luckily be performed quickly:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38759108/CUBASE%20SUPPORT/turn%20mono%20into%20stereo.wmv

Create a stereo track, pull the events from the mono track down (they stay at their time position when holding Ctrl while dragging/get copied at position when holding Alt + Crtl), in the mixer settings are copied from one channel to another by dragging it there (touched in the labelling area). All settings are identical except the routing which you’ll have to set manually.

Would be much to click the mono/stereo symbol and get a dropdown menu, allowing to change the configuration.