Logic 8 and stereo, annoying problems!

OK, I've been battling Logic 8 for a while now and its time to get an outside opinion because I am stumped!

I'm relatively new to logic but very experienced with audio in general, I dont think Ive missed anything simple but hopefully I have!

Basically, I've been trying to master a few stereo tracks through a single mono piece of hardware, all I want to do is play the left chanel through the gear, mix down then put the right channel through the gear, mix down again and then sum and mix them down again to a single stereo file.

should be easy and achieveable in many different ways, but they all result in a loss of the stereo image in some way.

the problem lies in that when I bounce or convert a stereo file in logic to split file, which gives me an independant L and R file, the resulting files panned hard L and R do not sound like the original stereo file.

its driving me mad, for a big project I used peak to swap the channels of each track and then recorded just the left of each of the two stereo files, this worked but I shouldnt have to do it!

I did a test, an audio file with just a synth on the left, nothing on the right, it looked and sounded fine in stereo, then I bounced it down to split and i got the same on both sides, ie the synth was there on L and R which it obviusly shouldnt be...

i did the same again, this time bouncing straight from the softsynth, when bounced to stereo it was fine, when bounced to split the L and R channels both had the synth on it...

this is the same when i get a stereo file and go to 'copy/convert' in the media pane. I just seem to get the left channel on both L and R files.

I have checked an double checked the settings many times, has anyone else experienced this? is it a preferences thign I have missed?

help! its driving me insane!

O

I just did some fiddling around, and this is what I found...

it seems that logic recognizes that those 2 mono files are supposed to be combined to make a stereo image... so it "links" them. im still not entirely sure why, or what use this is.... but yeah, I was doing a split bounce, and getting the same results that you described.

to get around it, select one of those files in your audio bin..... go to edit, and chose "disconnect selected split stereo file"

they will now be treated as mono files, and not some weird linked shit.

I never do split files, so I never came across this before.... this is good to know, in the future.

  Kcinsu said:

I just did some fiddling around, and this is what I found...

 

it seems that logic recognizes that those 2 mono files are supposed to be combined to make a stereo image... so it "links" them. im still not entirely sure why, or what use this is.... but yeah, I was doing a split bounce, and getting the same results that you described.

 

to get around it, select one of those files in your audio bin..... go to edit, and chose "disconnect selected split stereo file"

 

they will now be treated as mono files, and not some weird linked shit.

 

I never do split files, so I never came across this before.... this is good to know, in the future.

Brilliant, thanks man thats ended a lot of frustration! Looking around on the net and manual it seems that the split file format is used for apps like pro tools which only accept mono and mono linked files...

weird, but I'm very glad you've found the workaround, thats going to make my life a lot easier!!

O

that's the difference between split stereo and dual mono.

  sysex said:

that's the difference between split stereo and dual mono.

yeah, and I use pro tools quite a lot so I'm fairly used to the format but in pro tools you can see in finder/explorer that they are two separate files and fiddle with them separately! I think my confusion is because you can make split stereo files in logic, but you cant use them properly in your project once you have. you can add effects to them as a couple but try and use them in the arrange window and it will always just use the L (it seems).

Ive never used the format outside of pro tools and I think that gave me a confused understanding of the format!