Strange panning problem

[Andrew Rutley]

I have a problem when I export a hard panned track (like cymbals). Say I have a stereo audio track like this with sound only on the left channel, all good so far.

Then I export it as part of a mix, now it looks like this

It has changed to stereo and there is sound in both channels. The only time this doesn't happen is if I export only TRACK instead of ENTIRE MIX, but this is of no use for mastering. Any help would be appreciated.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Andrew Rutley

[Glenn Stanton]

are any of the plugins potentially causing this? maybe turn off the fx and export only the track as clean and see if it behaves the same. another is if the HH track is mono, set the track to mono and pan it hard.

[Andrew Rutley]

Thanks, I tried bypassing the FX on the master bus and it solved the issue, but it's not really a solution because for mastering I will need to have the masterbus FX active not bypassed, is there an answer for this?

[David Baay]

3 minutes ago, Andrew Rutley said:

I tried bypassing the FX on the master bus and it solved the issue, but it's not really a solution because for mastering I will need to have the masterbus FX active not bypassed

What FX are on the Master, and are there any Sends on the track in question to other buses? Clearly some FX downstream of the track is adding right-channel information. It looks like an exact copy of the left channel which suggests maybe the FX is mono-only so the same signal gets sent to both ouput channels of the bus. You'd have to hard-pan that bus to get the desired result.

It might help to understand what the ultimate goal is. Are you exporting stems to be mixed and mastered in another program/environment? Normally you would have everything routed to some intermediate bus and export those buses, bypassing any FX on the Master. But you'll still have the issue of mono-only FX producing a centered output.

[David Baay]

1 hour ago, Andrew Rutley said:

Say I have a stereo audio track like this with sound only on the left channel, all good so far.

Going back to this earlier statement and the related screenshot, I'm gathering you recorded a mono input to a stereo track to begin with. This isn't causing the problem per se  but it complicates the understanding of how FX will behave. Ideally you should first bounce that track to Split Mono with no FX active, delete the empty right-channel track, and start over with the remaining mono clip on a mono track with FX moved to that track.

[bitflipper]

It's most likely the reverb insert.  I see you're a FabFilter guy; any chance you have Pro-R? It has a mono version. If not, look through your reverb collection and try different ones, freezing each until you find one that preserves the interleave.

[John Vere]

I agree with @David Baay

If a sound is mono then it should always be a mono track. If you accidentally recorded it in stereo the first thing to do is convert it to mono.  Then the tracks pan control will be logical and controlling placement in the mix is straight forward