First of all, to my knowledge, it is not possible to combine Left and Right channel without using External VST’s. The Stereoexpander DSP-effect will only grab the left channel when set to “Mono”. Also there are times when I f.ex. want to grab left channel only and pan it to the right. So I’ve given this some thought over time - I would like to have a monoizer-effect added to the Gainer-dsp-effect. First, here’s a mockup:
Description: The monoizer function is enabled by clicking “Enable” and will produce mono-sound (same output in left and right channel). It can either pick the left signal, the right signal or combine them. I placed the controller in the middle because the Panning-function should be placed last in the signal-chain.
Let me give you an example of a recent case where I needed this feature in a song:
I was using a VST-vocoder where the carrier was fed to the left-input signal and the modulator to the right-input signal. The vocoder produced mono-output, and I wanted a stereo-vocoder, so I simply used two vocoders instead. I put each Vocoder on a send-channel.
Then I had two tracks, one with my voice (mono-signal, used for the carrier of the vocoders) and one with a stereo-synthesizer (used for the modulator of the vocoders).
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First, I panned the voice-track to the left and added two sends, for each carrier of the vocoders (using Keep-Source on the first one).
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Secondly I wanted to send the left channel of the synthesizer to the right channel of the first vocoder and the right channel of the synthesizer to the right channel to the second vocoder. Here is where it is getting troublesome. I first added a send-channel to a third send-track (using keep-source) to be able to have to copies of the synthesizer-track without the settings of the first one ruining the other. Then I added a Gainer to the synthesizer-track / 3rd send track which I panned left resp. right and then added a Monoizer VST-effect to these tracks, and finally adding ANOTHER gainer which I panned right / right. And Finally adding a send to both these to vocoder 1 respectively vocoder 2.
Voice Track - [Gainer, Pan Left] -> [Send S Vocoder 1, Keep Source ON] -> [Send S Vocoder 2]
Synthesizer Track - [Send Send3, Keep Source ON] -> [Gainer, Pan Left] -> [VST Monoizer] -> [Gainer, Pan Right] -> [Send S Vocoder 1]
S Vocoder 1 - [Vocoder VST] -> [Gainer, Pan Left]
S Vocoder 2 - [Vocoder VST] -> [Gainer, Pan Right]
Send 3 - [Gainer, Pan Right] -> [VST Monoizer] -> [Gainer, Pan Right] -> [Send S Vocoder 2]
If the Gainer would have this monoizer function, I could use 1 effect instead of 3 to be able to pan left/right/mixed-signal to the left/middle/right). The chain would then look like this:
Voice Track - [Gainer, Pan Left] -> [Send S Vocoder 1, Keep Source ON] -> [Send S Vocoder 2]
Synthesizer Track - [Send Send3, Keep Source ON] -> [Gainer, Monoize Left, Pan Right] -> [Send S Vocoder 1]
S Vocoder 1 - [Vocoder VST] -> [Gainer, Pan Left]
S Vocoder 2 - [Vocoder VST] -> [Gainer, Pan Right]
Send 3 - [Gainer, Monoize Right, Pan Right] -> [Send S Vocoder 2]
I have thinked about where this monoizer-function would make most use (it could be added to the stereo-expander, the send-effect or as a standard-effect on each channel) but my conclusion, or in my opinion, is that it’s most logically placed on the Gainer.
PS. The VST-effect I’ve used to combine left & right-channel is dfx Monomaker, just to make things clear. This plugin is what I’m refering to with “VST Monoizer”.