emu 1212m - sp/dif - mono/stereo confusion.

[anti--hero]

Hiya KVR,

sorry about my recent attack with dumb questions but I've recently taken to actually trying to understand the gear i have rather then botching it in a dear God way.

I have a emu1212m soundcard and a m-audio tampa pre-amp and using cubase SX3

I am using the tampa with sp/dif outputs which enters the Emu as a single ASIO stereo channel as dual mono , hard panned left and right.

My question and confusion is -

If i want to record a mono track in cubase, I have to select either a left or right channel. Say i was to pick left channel.

my confusion is - isnt the signal then being recorded as a hard panned left mono track ? (altho it does come out of both speakers and not just the left). My main point is, to ensure true mono, am i supposed to pan the left channel back into the centre via the emu input patchbay ?

I've tried 2 recordings of each and noticed that by panning the left channel back to the centre at the actual ASIO input in the emu patchbay, the track sounds more focused and louder. Now i;m not sure if its just a volume thing.

to further add to the chaos, i thought ok maybe using the sp/dif is for stereo operation only, so i loaded up a analog input template. This produced 2 separate mono tracks also panned hard left and right which again presents the problem to ensure true mono am i supposed to pan the selected channel to the centre ?

then theres the issue of - with sp/dif, in cubase as connections - i select spdif L & R for the respective channels.
but with analog to ensure sound comes out of both speakers i have to select I/O L & L. If i select I/O L & R , only the left speaker sounds. What is happening ?

aiiii...im not the most articulate person and hope this makes sense. ultimately what i want to do is to record everything in true mono.

Many thanks in advance.

Gef

[BertKoor]

Yeah, pick the left channel in CuBase and you have a true mono track. You could open the recorded WAV of that track in an audio editor, and verify it's one mono track only.

What happens along the way (between the mic and CuBase) isn't that important me thinks. Could be that any panning that's done along the way lowers the volume a bit, because the power is distributed evenly between the channels (so summed mono volume stays constant) So difference between your two recordings could very well be a volume thing.

Even though spdif is stereo, there's nothing inherently wrong with using only one channel of it.

I hope it makes sense ...

[anti--hero]

Thanks Bertkoor , Yep, I;ve decided to pan it to the middle at the source when doing a mono track regardless. It sounds better to my ears, altho i do not know the technical mojo behind it all.