Ableton Live - Scratching my head on something

[MakiSupaStar]

So I'm in the arrangement view and I'm laying out all my tracks and stuff. I've created a beat that I'm happy with for right now, recorded a bassline (that might need to be redone later - but that's another issue), and recorded my buddy on guitar. I'm not sure if how I'm doing it is right, but here's how I set it up.
I have a tracks dedicated to left and right pans for everything. So, I'm finally at a point where I want to create a CD for review, and I realized that I had all my bass and guitar tracks "OUT" set up as ext 1 and 2 respectively, so that I could create left and right tracks. It wasn't until I tried to rip everything down to an AIF that I realized what I had done.

So I went back and set everything to the master, and ripped the CD. All the guitar tracks (there are six total) were crammed right. All that time I spent setting the pans was wasted. Ugh. I have a skank pair of tracks, a groove pair of track, and a solo pair of track. Oh yeah and an echo pair of tracks that I throw stuff into to create echo effects when I want them. So when I went down and set all my tracks to the master, I noticed all the guitar I recorded was shifted right. Everything crammed to the right side. I've duplicated the track, I recorded into new tracks, I've copied and pasted into new tracks, but nothing allows me to create a left pan track. On those guitar tracks. It's like it's perpetually stuck on the right side of my sound. Any suggestions? As you can tell I'm headlong into this. LOL.

Thanks for your help.

[mrjameskent]

Hi

I have a feeling that maybe when you recorded the guitars, you've recorded them panned - so essentially there is only 'left hand' data for the tracks you've panned left.

one way to check is to look at the wav file - is there a mirror image on the top and bottom? If its recorded only one side, then you'll only have the audio visible on either the top or the bottom of the middle (centre point) line.

If this is the case, you might be able to do something with the Utility plugin, under Midi Effects. I think this gives you an option to be able to create a mono file. Then you can just pan the tracks left and right, as if its a mono file there wouldn't be any difference (my understanding of mono, i could be wrong).

A good place to check is the KVR forums, go to the production techniques one - LOTS of experts in DAW recording there.

Hope that helps
J

[mutedeity]

I haven't started using Abletone just yet, I got a copy of it the other day though. With that in mind I won't give you any Abelton specific advice and take what I say here with a grain of salt. This advice will also be based on other software I have used.

If what mrjameskent says is right you would have to mix your right panned tracks down to mono and then pan it left. Otherwise you could invert the track. I don't know yet what functions Ableton has for that but I would assume it has something along those lines. Let us know how you get on and what you do to correct it.

[MKS]

A screenshot of your mix showing the pan knobs and input / outputs would really help. Should be a fairly simple problem to fix if I can see it... (Sorry, can't really visualise what you've written!).

As a side issue, why double up all the tracks?

[D.A.R.K.]

it sounds like you recorded to only one side if a stereo track,
which you will have to convert to mono. as already stated,
you can use the utility plug for this.
in preferences, when you select audio>input,
you can select either mono, stereo or both for input capability.
then, when you go to the input selection on each track,
the drop down menu will let you select either mono or stereo.
hope this makes sense.

[MakiSupaStar]

Hey everyone thanks for all your input. I discovered I had a couple if problems. All the bass I recorded was mono left, and all the guitars were mono right. In addition to that the only way I could get close to shaping the mix I wanted was by using Ext. Out sound. Great for playback, not so great for rendering. So I jumped on ableton's LIVE forum and did some research. This is where I discovered the utility thing. Was able to dampen the output on some hot tracks as well as set it to left and right where needed. Then I could send it to the master for rendering. Thanks everyone. Maybe others who have the dame issue can read this thread in the future.

[fretlessrock]

You can also use the mono effect to get rid of the l/r issues with the individual tracks, or you can convert them to stereo in an editor (i.e copy left to right and save). Also, record mono tracks in mono and prevent this problem at the beginning.