Grouped Tracks in Reaper Not Panning Correctly

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Zerochance

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Oct 3, 2013
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Hey Dudes:

Bit of a recording newbie. I’m more of a metal songwriter than a “production” dude; currently in the process of recording some home demos and trying to get a better sound of my home recordings.

Anyway, judging by my research, this is a common issue, but none of the answers that I’ve tried are working, and I’m having a hard time finding a thread that is a big lighter on the technical jargon. Maybe that can’t be avoided, but here it goes.

Currently using Reaper as my DAW. I am making extensive use of VSTs for my guitar sounds, and I’m grouping tracks as much as I can to conserve processing power. This is currently my chain for rhythm guitars:

TSE 808 (Tubescreamer VST)
LePou LE456 (amp)
LeCab2 (impulse loader)

For leads I am using a similar chain, except with an AmpLion Mesa sim instead of the LePou plugins. It doesn’t need an impulse loader (has a cabinet sim built into it) and sounds great.

Anyway, I have created a master track with my VSTs in the effects chain, and created two tracks: one hard left and one hard right. As soon as I group them together, the panning stops working and everything gets squished into a mono track. Before you dudes ask, yes, I have switched all of my VSTs to stereo mode.

The problem is with the amp sims themselves. When I leave just the TSE 808 on switched to stereo mode, the panning works fine, but as soon as I engage the amps in the master track FX chain, the panning gets squished to mono. The problem persists with both the LePou and the AmpLion. I have tried switching to panning to stereo on all Reaper tracks as well, and as I mentioned all VSTs are switched to stereo mode and I still can’t get my grouped tracks to pan correctly. Don’t think it’s my interface because as I mentioned, the panning works fine when I leave just the TSE 808 on,

Any ideas? Every answer I’ve looked up for this particular problem is not fixing it. Thank you all so much!
 
yea, i think years ago i tried this and noticed something similar and just dumped it and went with the single tracks, mono, panned hard either L or R. Are you short on CPU/MEM, is that why you're grouping like that?
 
I will definitely post screenshots sometime today.

I am low on processing power. I have an older iMac that I use for my recordings. I have a much newer Macbook I could use, but it's a work computer and I would prefer not to.

I did record my rhythm tracks going the "mono tracks panned L and R" route, but I'm in the process of laying down leads, and I like tons of doubling and harmonizing in solos, and I'm running a little low on CPU juice.

I could ultimately bounce all other tracks and create a new Reaper file just for leads, but if I could get the panning to work correctly, it'd be a lot more practical.
 
Here's a quick bounce of the track in question - drums, bass, and rhythm guitars only. A few spikes on the bass (guessing compression issues?) and maybe a bit of clean-up, but it's fairly presentable.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
- Maybe a dumb question, but are you sure you've got everything set to stereo? I'm looking at the AmpLion site right now and it doesn't seem to say anything the plugin being stereo-capable - all it has is separate pannable cabs. As for the LePou stuff, LeCab has to have your impulse loaded in two separate slots - one set for left and panned left, one set right and panned right. So, you know... something to doublecheck.

- If you bypass all the plugins in your chain and then enable them one by one, which one causes the mono? If you skip that one and enable the next plugin, does the stereo still work?

- Also, have you actually tried running two separate plugins? A few years ago I found that the CPU difference between two mono copies and one stereo copy of any LePou amp was almost nonexistent. It was basically saving the cost of running a second copy of the plugin's graphic interface.
 
Yeah that's strange. Every single time I've ran into this problem it was always a result of not having a certain plugin set to stereo.

try NadIR for an impulse loader and see if it helps.
 
Jormyn said:
- Maybe a dumb question, but are you sure you've got everything set to stereo? I'm looking at the AmpLion site right now and it doesn't seem to say anything the plugin being stereo-capable - all it has is separate pannable cabs. As for the LePou stuff, LeCab has to have your impulse loaded in two separate slots - one set for left and panned left, one set right and panned right. So, you know... something to doublecheck.

- If you bypass all the plugins in your chain and then enable them one by one, which one causes the mono? If you skip that one and enable the next plugin, does the stereo still work?

- Also, have you actually tried running two separate plugins? A few years ago I found that the CPU difference between two mono copies and one stereo copy of any LePou amp was almost nonexistent. It was basically saving the cost of running a second copy of the plugin's graphic interface.
Click to expand...

I have tried loading the impulses on separate cabs in LeCab and the problem persists. I have checked every single VST in the chain and they're all set to stereo when possible. The AmpLion may not support stereo, so I think you might be right about that. I may just do mono tracks for this one since I do love this VST for solos. It has a lot of clarity.

I will do the screencaps ASAP.

The Amp sims are specifically causing the mono. I have not tried the TSE with LeCab and no amp, so I will give that a shot but I think the panning still worked, but it's definitely the amp sims.

The mp3 I just posted was recorded with two mono tracks of the LE456 panned hard L and R. I will roll with this if I can't get the stereo panning to work, but man, it would sure be convenient!
 
Jormyn said:
- Also, have you actually tried running two separate plugins? A few years ago I found that the CPU difference between two mono copies and one stereo copy of any LePou amp was almost nonexistent. It was basically saving the cost of running a second copy of the plugin's graphic interface.
Click to expand...
It won't fix the issue, but I agree with this.
Using stereo mode on most plugins is just more convenient, but the needed processing power on stereo/2tracks will obviously double (like using 2 mono instances).
 
KHE said:
sure you've got the panning right inside lecab2 ?
Click to expand...

I absolutely did. I had the same impulse loaded in two cabs, one left and one right, both panned correctly, meaning hard L and R. I switched to NadIR and the panning is working correctly. Same impulse and everything. Odd.
 
Sorry to bump this, but I ran into a bit of shit last night.

Reaper and NadIR.......I'm damn sure I always set it to Dual Mono mode and would use different impulses for hard left and hard right guitars.

Last night I realized that it was just blending the 2 impulses so it was using 2 impulses for each left and right signal. I didn't want this, so I tried switching to Stereo mode in NadIR. (I have a single chain set up as a folder and 2 "bare" tracks for the DIs going to the chain). Now this seems to fix my issue, but I ran into a new problem - when I pan anything under 100%, I can hear the dry, undergained guitar signal come from the opposite speaker. Sorta like if you drop the fader on a guitar track and it affects the input signal going into the amp sim. I've never noticed this before....so it had me scratching my head for a while and I literally gave up trying to find a workaround.

I supposed it's just a matter of the track not being froze/rendered with fx on it but it was really starting to irritate me as I figured it was something really simple.

Any ideas?
 
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