Freeze/Flatten to MONO

[Angstrom]

The most frustrating part of all this is that I start with a mono vocal track, mono waves tuner, mono SSL channel strip, mono limiter and alas... stereo flattened track. Makes no sense. Please ableton, fix this soon.

I agree this is confusing at best. But it's much worse IMO. Live doesn't even record mono input sources consistently. What's that about?

I agree! How can you flatten to mono in an environment that cannot create mono tracks to begin with?? LOL Better fix that first.

Yes, you can use Utility to output something that sounds like mono, but is actually left and right channels with identical content. Live records everything in stereo, always, even if it only displays one channel.

Live 10 records mono waves



that said ... I'd really love some better freezing and flattening tools, as you can probably see by the image I have to resample a lot so that I can get what I need.

[Stromkraft]

Live 10 records mono waves

Live 9 records mono as well. Wasn't this about flatten?

[Angstrom]

I guess it does.
I was mainly responding to this statement.

How can you flatten to mono in an environment that cannot create mono tracks to begin with?? LOL Better fix that first.

[redglass]

+ 1

[Stromkraft]

Yes, you can use Utility to output something that sounds like mono, but is actually left and right channels with identical content. Live records everything in stereo, always, even if it only displays one channel.

No, this is not true even if it might have been before, at least it's not all the time. Live records mono sources in mono most of the time and sometimes even displays then as mono. I wish it would do this more reliably and more predictable.

A mono signal is not "recorded in stereo" in Live, it's recorded in "Dual Mono", which basically is the same mono signal at a lower volume split into two channels that together adds up to the same level as a real mono track.

It doesn't make much sense to state that Utility can help you "output something that sounds like mono", because it is not "like mono" it is mono from all practical concerns. The signal is just split between two channels. A mono source also plays in both channels, so the above statement of yours does not really have a point.

This is also why even a mono source recording, when flattened after processing ends up as a stereo file. Live is simply very stereo or Dual mono. Given this behaviour it's somewhat ironic that it's taken until Live 10 to get proper stereo panning.

[SvenH]

+1 Please fix this!

[Jon Cresswell Music]

Found this form while looking for a quick solution in ableton 10 myself within the daw. It looks like its not a feature available within the daw so ableton please fix this in the future I would shed tears of joy. Until then, I found a desktop app called stereo monoizer, they have a free trial so you can experience it for yourself.

Its a fast a simple way to fix this problem and minimize CPU.
Here's the idea, you produce the full session, freeze tracks, whatever THEN before mixing bounce the stems down take them to stereo monoizer and it will turn any stereo tracks that should be mono to mono and leave tracks with actual stereo info alone. It also lets you bounce to a set peak volume. So its been a win win for me.

I do wish I could do this in ableton because it would make things more seemless.. I kid you not, my computer is a beast and it was crashing mix sessions constantly. After removing silence from the tracks and especially fixing unnecessary stereo tracks that should be mono its been running massive track count sessions at like 7% cpu usage. Crazy how much an impact it makes to use mono files etc.

[tealwarrior]

Almost 2024 and still looking for this feature!

Editing vocals in mono is sooo much nicer because it’s easier to see transients, esses, breaths, etc. If I’m aligning multiple vocal layers having them all in mono is a huge advantage to see how they align and what needs to be edited. It is such an advantage that after I tune vocals, I flatten them, consolidate parts, drag them into Audacity, make them mono, export them and bring them back into Live for EVERY track! Other producers I know just don’t use Live for editing vocals rather than performing a 6-step process that really should be 1 step.

Live is known for being great for editing audio; please keep it that way.