Re: A question for people smarter than me....

Personally, I like to split my stereo tracks into two mono tracks. The only reason is that I am more comfortable working that way. Just my 2 cents.

I had to get onto this one - boy would I love to be smarter that Someone! Actually I like to keep stereo recordings on stereo tracks to keep idiots - inclucing myself - from moving one or the other independently by accident - and believe me there are ways to do it - unless you are LOCKED into a stereo track. Groups can be UN grouped - stereo tracks can only be seperated by an act of the FILE menu - and even then the original STEREO track is maintained. BMann

Thanks. That was my question, and that makes sense. I will try some of those techniques.

A question for people smarter than me.... 

What you can also do is build yourself an "effect console" (once done you can import it from session to session) that effectively reproduces what is happening inside your synth. Usually that means having one aux track with some kind of stereo chorus or harmonizer, one with a reverb that works well with pads, and eventually one with a "magical" stereo delay (in tempo) combination. Each one with a bus as input. That way you can strip a synth sound naked of any effect, record it in mono, pan it as you like and find the right combination of bus sends to recreate the ambience. In the case of analog pads you may even record two slightly modified patches each on its own mono track, and pan them left-right for maximum effect (always check in mono however for any excessive phasing) However some synth have beautiful stereo so its up to you to find which ones can be recorded mono or stereo

I'm getting smarter by the minute!

From reading all of your posts I'm getting smarter tooooo. Mono vs. stereo hmm