Why Is Audio Track Now Recording Mono?

[DallasSteve]

In the screenshot below I have a section (Pre-Chorus) recorded in stereo and another (Chorus) recorded in mono (I think).   I recorded the Pre-Chorus last week and I went in today to redo the Chorus.  I did not intend to change from stereo to mono.    Actually, I thought it was a mono track.  I may know the cause and the solution, but I'll post this anyway to see what the experts say.  I added 3 Audio FX to the track last week (Melodyne, Modulator, and Reverb).  Then I froze the tracks.  Does one of those effects cause the mono track to become stereo when you freeze it?  The stereo sounds much better.  My voice almost sounds decent.  I want to get that effect again in the Chorus.  I'm going to proceed with applying the effects and freezing the track again after I finish cleaning up the vocals.

[Lord Tim]

You're overthinking this a little, it's actually fairly simple if you think of stuff as tasks rather than big chunks.

Task 1 is to record:

Arm your track, do your performance. If you have effects in the bin already, great, but it's not time to focus on that. Chop up the vocal as needed, choose the best takes, etc. etc. All of the things you'd ordinarily do for a recorded take.

Task 2 is to polish it:

Right-Mouse Button + Drag around all of the vocal clips you want to tune to select them, then Right-Click on of them and do Region FX > Melodyne > Create Region FX. This will open up Melodyne in the Multidock. Edit as you see fit - you'll likely have a lot more control over the performance this way rather than putting it in the FX Bin. When you're done, you'll see you have one big clip with the Melodyne Region FX on it. Right Click that clip and choose Bounce to Clips to lock off all of your Melodyne edits.

Task 3 is to choose the effects for the track:

Add any effects you like in the FX Bin, adjust to taste.

Task 4 is to freeze the track if you want to save CPU resources, by clicking the little * icon on the track header.

If you want to add any more recordings to that track, unfreeze the track first, and then record the new part. And then go through the above steps again for the new recordings: Choose your takes and edit it as you see fit, then select all of the new recorded parts and add Melodyne and polish the performance, then bounce this new part to a clip, and then simply re-freeze the track. 

Freezing should really be a last step thing though, so you can probably save a few mouse clicks by leaving that until you're ready to sign off on the track entirely (but with the advantage still leaving yourself the option of un-freezing if you want to in the future, of course).

Tips: Rather than Right-Clicking your clips and popping up a menu to add Melodyne, it's usually mapped to CTRL+M.  I've also set up a custom key binding to make CTRL+B Bounce to Clips, which saves me doing a popup menu for that.

On paper this sounds like a bunch of extra steps, but once you get the workflow down, it goes really fast, and you have the added piece of mind that you won't end up with deleted takes or clips doing weird stuff. The tasks are their own checks and balances.

 

[Lord Tim]

It looks like you've recorded after the track was already frozen? In which case, you'll get your mono input, but won't get any of the stereo effects in the FX bin at all. What you need to do is unfreeze the track first, record your new vocal parts, and then freeze the track again - you'll see them processed through the stereo effects at that point.

[John Vere]

Melodyn is not normally used in an effects bin. It is a Regional Effect. Is that why you are freezing? 

The preferred way to work with Melodyne editor is first make a copy of the track and archive it as a back up.. 

You highlight a preferably short audio clip,

right click to open the dialog shown in my screen shot. Then choose as shown to Create a regional effect. 

This will open Melodyne editor . 

When your finished editing then open the same dialog and choose "Render Regional effect" 

This prints the editing to the audio file permanently. and frees up CPU and Memory usage. If you found you need to re do something it's easy to use the back up copy of the track. 

 

[DallasSteve]

Lord Tim

That may be my problem I recorded the new vocals while the track was frozen.  I still don't understand the mono/stereo situation.  When I add an audio track it doesn't ask me if I want stereo or mono.  When I look at the new audio track it looks like mono because it has only one squiggly line in the track icon.  But in my screenshot the track has two squiggly lines like stereo.  I just tested Freeze and that seems to be when it happens.  If I have a Pan dial I don't see how that would work unless it is stereo.   Can you explain the stereo/mono on an audio track?  I can try to find it in the documentation, if necessary.

[DallasSteve]

John Vere

I had seen that Regional Effect before, but I don't know how to work that way.  I understand the Effect rack and I found it easier to go with that.  Will it be easier if I treat Melodyne as a Regional Effect?  Melodyne seems to work correctly in the Effect rack.

[Lord Tim]

1 hour ago, DallasSteve said:

Lord Tim

That may be my problem I recorded the new vocals while the track was frozen.  I still don't understand the mono/stereo situation.  When I add an audio track it doesn't ask me if I want stereo or mono.  When I look at the new audio track it looks like mono because it has only one squiggly line in the track icon.  But in my screenshot the track has two squiggly lines like stereo.  I just tested Freeze and that seems to be when it happens.  If I have a Pan dial I don't see how that would work unless it is stereo.   Can you explain the stereo/mono on an audio track?  I can try to find it in the documentation, if necessary.

This is based on what your input is set to which, if you're recording a mono source like a microphone, is normally set to mono. You *can* force it to stereo but there's zero point at all when it's a mono source. Once you put effects on a track, however, if they're stereo effects, they typically freeze to a stereo wav.

Recording onto a frozen track is a Really Bad Idea.

First of all, the idea is that if it's frozen, it means it's taken all of the effects in your FX Bin offline and printed them to the track. Anything new on the track will not have any of those effects added to it at all - they're entirely bypassed.

If you do record onto an already frozen track and then decide that you want to change something in the effects and unfreeze to do so, the track will revert to it's original unfrozen state, which means anything done to it after it was originally frozen will go away.

And like John said, Melodyne shouldn't be used in the FX Bin. Edit the clip directly first and bounce it down. Get all of it how you like with your other effects live in the bin, then then you're ready, freeze the track. If you want to add anything new to it, unfreeze it first, record, then do any Region Effects, and then freeze it again.

EDIT: I should mention that you should copy your new mono recording out of your frozen track right away and put it onto another track, because if/when you unfreeze the track, that new recording will be deleted.  Once the track is unfrozen, copy that clip back to where it was, and then freeze the track again - it should all be stereo then.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Lord Tim

[DallasSteve]

Lord Tim

I have been  doing Melodyne in the Effects rack and it seems to work.  I'd rather not add a whole 'nother layer of complexity to this. 

A - What will be the problem using it in the Effects rack?

B - If I go the Regional Effects route I'm still unsure of the sequence of steps:

1 - Apply other effects to the audio track (or does Freeze track do that)

2 - Freeze the track

3 - Make a duplicate of the track (with events)

4 - Freeze that backup track (necessary?)

5 - Archive that backup track

6 -  Unfreeze the original track

7 - Create a Melodyne region

8 - Do the Melodyne steps

9 - Freeze that track

 

[DallasSteve]

Lord Tim

Thanks for all that work.  I just tried doing it with a Region FX and it's not too complicated, but there is one thing it makes more difficult in the way I work.  I have a Midi vocal guide track that I create while I'm writing the song.  That's how I roll.  I compare that to the Melodyne blobs and I fix my bad singing.  Even after doing the Correct Pitch macro, I'm sometimes off by 1 or more semitones.   Doing it the Region FX way I don't see how to display the piano roll side by side with the Melodyne editor.  Maybe if I undock them?  On the plus sound, it looks like the Region FX method may actually produce a better pitch correction than what I was getting the other way, so it's worth the extra effort.

Bonus question: Under Region FX there is a choice for Vocal Sync.  Can you tell me if I have that and what it's for?  If not, I can look it up.

 

[scook]

Vocal Sync

[DallasSteve]

I checked out the VocalSync tool.  It's a neat idea, but what I need is something that would sync my Audio track to a Midi track as the guide to keep my vocals better in time with the music.  Is there an effect for that?  That would require a lot of magic.

[Byron Dickens]

There is. Its called "practice."

[John Vere]

Even though this sounds rude I have to agree with mr Dickens. If your pitch is that far off might be a good idea to do some voice training. 
 

We all started somewhere and singing is all about control of your voice. That only comes with practice, just like a basketball shot. 
 

I haven’t looked but I would imagine that there are many good tutorials on singing now. 
 

That said there’s definitely a way to use midi to control vocals. I think the hardware to do that was originally made here in BC in the 80’s. Possibly better versions of Melodyne can do this?  
 

Anyways glad you’re finally using it properly and you can move forward from there.