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Old 2010-09-14, 08:23
santamanuela santamanuela is offline
Join Date: Sep 2010
Posts: 14
Create "true mono" FX on mixer channels

Hey guys what's up? Just wondering if you could give me a hand here, not sure if it's possible.

I'm working with Reason 5.0. I have a couple of live songs where I only use reason racks for everything (1 rack per song, of course).

I have everything in there, even the audio vocals, with its respective effects, of course. As usual in real life, vocals are using just one channel (mono L channel on the mixer). I have two mics connected to channels 1 and 2, only through the L input of each.

What I do is that I pan the 1st mic on channel 1 all to the left and then the 2nd one on channel 2 all to the right, in order to be able to use just one mixer per both voices. Mixer then is connected to a combinator, and out to external output 1 and 2. So the connection is just a basic regular stereo connection, the difference is that only channel 1 goes to output L and finally through ext output 1; and then channel 2 in the mixer goes out through out R and finally through ext. out 2.

I did this in order to be able to use the same effects for both mics, thinking that I would just have to control them through the mixer's aux channels, and since both mics are panned, they should both be delivered externally completely independently from eachother.

Here's the thing, it didn't happen. Raw connections (no FX) with these linements work perfectly, both channels get independently to my external mixer. When I use the FX (reverbs, delays, whatever), these send signal of each channel through both channels, making my mix no longer independent from eachother. Of course I thought it be a "mono to stereo FX" issue, so I tried disconnecting the R channel of all fx from all aux, didn't work either, still getting stereo signal.

I understand L means mono, and thus anything going in L will go out through both L and R. So I tried pluggin the FX just on its R channel: this time, the audio is canceled (as explained by the diagrams on the back of each fx device).

So the obvious solution for this is to use separate mixers and double all my FX, simply connecting each group to its respective output channel. The problem is, I would have to manage and double the same fx for both vocal channels on all my 20 songs/reason racks. Plus, it also seems a big waste to have to consume double the resources in all those "dummy" FX

So, is there any other solution to this problem? I've tried everything I can think of, even putting separate eq's after the mixer outs, to see if this will make my channels independent again, no luck yet