Ableton Forum

I have had this happen a few times but I am at a loss to explain why. For no apparent reason, the stereo track that I was working on has become mono. I didn't change any of the settings. Any advice on how to fix this when it happens? Thanks!

baskervils wrote:I have had this happen a few times but I am at a loss to explain why. For no apparent reason, the stereo track that I was working on has become mono. I didn't change any of the settings. Any advice on how to fix this when it happens? Thanks!

How is this track routed? Normally, Live wouldn't affect anything like this when recording playing clips from Session view to Arrangement when on the same track. But maybe you are routing the audio elsewhere than what you think that affects audio when you do Arrangement recording. I assume here that you do the latter by using the Arrangement Record button while playing and interacting with clips, instruments and the mixer in session view.

Thanks for the reply. No fancy routing. It's simply a guitar into input 4. In Clip / Session view, it always records stereo, but in Arrangement view it shifted to mono and I am baffled as to why. It's happened before randomly.

how are you distinguishing mono from stereo, given that all tracks in Live are treated as dual-channel?

if you are recording only a single input then the recording will be dual-mono, i.e a stereo recording with exactly the same signal on the L+R channels.

if you have selected inputs 3/4 on the record-enabled track then you will get a stereo recording with only signal on the right channel...

fishmonkey wrote: if you are recording only a single input then the recording will be dual-mono, i.e a stereo recording with exactly the same signal on the L+R channels.

It will in all likelihood be displayed as one mono waveform still, which will distinguish it from a stereo recording.

That a mono recording gets recorded to stereo in Arrangement has never ever occurred to me.

Administrators,

this is actually a response to Stereo Track Became Mono In Arrangement View When Recording. Please merge with that.

baskervils, please use the "Post Reply button or Quote button on the message you're responding to, instead of making a whole new discussion.

i just tried it here. recording a single input displays a mono waveform in both session and arrangement (although both display as stereo in the meters).

fishmonkey wrote:if you are recording only a single input then the recording will be dual-mono, i.e a stereo recording with exactly the same signal on the L+R channels.

Hey Fishmonkey, I just needed to point out that actually this is not true, the recording from a single input will be a 1 channel mono file - like one would expect. I just tried it again to be absolutely sure and recorded from my mic through one input on my sound card in Session view and Arrangement view and I got a mono file. Live says so in the the audio clips, but I also checked the files properties itself and it is mono.... and I opened it in Adobe Audition... just to have a third source verify it and it is in fact a mono file.

Stromkraft wrote:That a mono recording gets recorded to stereo in Arrangement has never ever occurred to me.

As mentioned above, no, it actually stays mono.

But, like fishmonkey mentioned, the track meters are stereo and so will display the waveform on both left and right sides, so the question here would be.... if one really needs to know ... does the signal get converted to dual mono in the signal chain? or is it just that Ableton didn't bother to change the meter display to mono for mono tracks?

And if it does in fact get converted to dual-mono, at what point does the signal get converted to dual-mono? Right after the clip?

Although, really, I guess it's more academic than anything.... does this all make a huge difference one way or another in the sound?

Da hand wrote:
Hey Fishmonkey, I just needed to point out that actually this is not true, the recording from a single input will be a 1 channel mono file - like one would expect. I just tried it again to be absolutely sure and recorded from my mic through one input on my sound card in Session view and Arrangement view and I got a mono file. Live says so in the the audio clips, but I also checked the files properties itself and it is mono.... and I opened it in Adobe Audition... just to have a third source verify it and it is in fact a mono file.

No, it's a dual mono track. You have simply made an analytical error.

Da hand wrote:does this all make a huge difference one way or another in the sound?

Not at all.

Da hand wrote:the track meters are stereo and so will display the waveform on both left and right sides, so the question here would be.... if one really needs to know ... does the signal get converted to dual mono in the signal chain? or is it just that Ableton didn't bother to change the meter display to mono for mono tracks?

Just because the track is (dual) mono doesn't mean it doesn't live in the stereo image, now does it?:

"The Pan control positions the track’s output in the stereo field. To reset the Pan control to center, click on its associated triangle. With multiple tracks selected, adjusting the pan knob for one of them will adjust the others as well. "

The Live mixer (Ableton Reference Manual Version 9)

So why would Live not display the stereo channels? I think you'd agree that wouldn't make sense.

fishmonkey wrote:i just tried it here. recording a single input displays a mono waveform in both session and arrangement (although both display as stereo in the meters).

I managed to record from the Loopback application, even removing the stereo pair in Live's preferences and selecting one mono input in the I/O of the track in Live, and ended up with what looks like a stereo file also outside of Live (note this is the actual AIFF file and not an exported version).

Even more confusing I get the same result with recording a mono source from my RME audio interface. This is not what I expected, based on previous tests, and what more it's completely different from what you say you get when recording a mono source.

I do wonder if Live 9.7.x can have had some changes for this. That seems unlikely though, but if the OP had started recording in an older version, then updated, this could possibly come at play when recording to Arrangement. I'm not sure what to make of this yet.

Stromkraft wrote:

Da hand wrote:
Hey Fishmonkey, I just needed to point out that actually this is not true, the recording from a single input will be a 1 channel mono file - like one would expect. I just tried it again to be absolutely sure and recorded from my mic through one input on my sound card in Session view and Arrangement view and I got a mono file. Live says so in the the audio clips, but I also checked the files properties itself and it is mono.... and I opened it in Adobe Audition... just to have a third source verify it and it is in fact a mono file.

No, it's a dual mono track. You have simply made an analytical error.

As far as I can see I made no error, but I was not talking about the audio track in Live, I was talking about the audio file recorded onto my hard disk and being referenced/contained in the audio clip afterwards. The file I recorded in Live from a single channel on my sound card resulted in a mono file - 24 bit, 1058 kbps. If it was a 24 bit dual mono or a stereo file it would be 2116 kbps.

Da hand wrote:
As far as I can see I made no error, but I was not talking about the audio track in Live, I was talking about the audio file recorded onto my hard disk and being referenced/contained in the audio clip afterwards. The file I recorded in Live from a single channel on my sound card resulted in a mono file - 24 bit, 1058 kbps. If it was a 24 bit dual mono or a stereo file it would be 2116 kbps.

Given my posted result above I'm inclined to take your word on this. But that means you, Fishmonkey and I have three different results from doing the same thing, recording a mono source. This is both unexpected and surprising.

You get a mono file, Fishmonkey gets a dual mono file and I get a stereo file.

I use Live 9.7.1 on OS X 10.11.6 with RME Babyface. What do you use?

That is weird!

I tested it on a computer running Live 9.6, Win 7, with an NI Audio8 card.

Stromkraft wrote: I managed to record from the Loopback application, even removing the stereo pair in Live's preferences and selecting one mono input in the I/O of the track in Live, and ended up with what looks like a stereo file also outside of Live (note this is the actual AIFF file and not an exported version).

OK, order has been restored as far as what type Live records from a mono source and that's Dual Mono files, if with other characteristics than I got the last time I tried this. I managed to further analyse the recorded file and extracted the channels and reversed the polarity of one and mixed them together in mono. The result is silence, proving to me this is a dual mono track.

This doesn't explain why Live displays it as a stereo file.

Da hand wrote:

Stromkraft wrote:

Da hand wrote:
Hey Fishmonkey, I just needed to point out that actually this is not true, the recording from a single input will be a 1 channel mono file - like one would expect. I just tried it again to be absolutely sure and recorded from my mic through one input on my sound card in Session view and Arrangement view and I got a mono file. Live says so in the the audio clips, but I also checked the files properties itself and it is mono.... and I opened it in Adobe Audition... just to have a third source verify it and it is in fact a mono file.

No, it's a dual mono track. You have simply made an analytical error.

As far as I can see I made no error, but I was not talking about the audio track in Live, I was talking about the audio file recorded onto my hard disk and being referenced/contained in the audio clip afterwards.

Yes, that's a given. Your mistake here is assuming Audition doesn't chose to display a dual mono file as being mono, just as Live at least used to do. You need to open it in Audacity instead that doesn't hide the channels.