question about rendering stems...

[EcBaPr]

I am looking to render a bunch of stereo and mono stems.. i have a midi track and some busses which are being rendered as stereo and i would like them to be mono.. i selected the render mono tracks to mono files option in the render dialog and put a mono VST plugin last in the chain but its still rendering as stereo ?

when you have a mono audio file on the track it sees this as mono but is there anyway to force tracks such as midi and busses to be seen as mono sources and rendered that way when the "mono files" setting is enabled ?

at the moment the only option i see is to render all the stereo stems and then do a second pass for the mono stems which isn't optimial given I have lots of things to render.. based on the way the project is setup its not effective to use render queue.. I would prefer to find a way to force stereo tracks to be seen as mono for the render..

[xpander]

Originally Posted by EcBaPr

i selected the render mono tracks to mono files option in the render dialog and put a mono VST plugin last in the chain but its still rendering as stereo ?

You'll have to set Channels to Mono in render options to get a mono render.

[EcBaPr]

thanks... that is what I have done, one stereo pass and then a mono pass.. its not too bad cause there isn't much mono stuff and it renders fairly quickly.

[xpander]

I meant rendering into mono straight up, no stereo render in between. Channels set to mono is all I need for that here.

[EcBaPr]

not sure I follow what you mean ? i'll explain a bit more what I'm doing..

I have around 8 channels in Reaper I want to render to stems.. 5 of them are stereo busses I want rendered as stereo wav files and the other 3 I want as mono wav.. of the 3 mono channels, 1 is a mono audio and the other 2 tracks have VSTi which are stereo but I want these VSTi to be rendered as mono wavs.. I tried to put a mono VST at the end of the chain on those VSTi channels and this plays back mono but when I setup the render and select the "tracks with mono media to mono files" option these VSTi channels still render as stereo (even with the mono VST plugin in the chain)..

When I select the render as only mono obviously everything is then rendered mono including the 5 channels I want to keep as stereo..

So other than doing one render pass for all the stereo stems and then rendering a second time with mono selected in render dialog, I'm not sure what else to do ?

[ashcat_lt]

Well you could use one of the “right-click” render options (render/freeze/apply FX...) on the mono tracks themselves so that they actually have mono media on them, but that’s still an extra step and not significantly better than where you are now. There can be other benefits to “flattening” these kinds of midi-generated “virtual” tracks, but kind of only in special instances.

It might be nice to have an option - maybe in region render matrix - to choose the channel count for each stem individually. That’s still not automatic, but I think better.

Ultimately, though, rendering a mono source to a stereo file just makes a dual mono file which will sound the same as it did in the project. It “wastes” some disk space, but that’s not such a big deal nowadays. Maybe you just need to take your OCD meds and leave it alone.

[EcBaPr]

Originally Posted by ashcat_lt

Maybe you just need to take your OCD meds and leave it alone.

not an OCD thing.. these files are being played on an old laptop alongside a bunch of other tracks with automation and midi and possibly some VSTs so conserving space is sensible..

[xpander]

I'm blind, sorry EcBaPr...I missed that you want to render some to stereo and some to mono at the same time.

[EcBaPr]

no probs..