Mono VSTs Only Affect Left Channel

Hi everyone,

I’ve run into a strange issue with applying VST plugins to my mono guitar tracks. If I insert a VST plugin, let’s say an EQ to a guitar track panned hard left, everything works just as it should. However, when I insert an effect on a track panned hard right, the EQ has no effect whatsoever. Interestingly, on a track panned dead center, I can hear the EQ taking effect, but only through the left monitor.

There’s more…bare with me. I decided to solo the right guitar track and export it as a wav file to the desktop. Oddly, when playing the file, sound is heard just fine, but no visual waveform is occurring in the player.

Something strange is happening here. Although I’m about 99% certain this is being caused by something very simple which I’ve overlooked, I thought I’d reach out through the forum. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

It certainly is strange but that is the way Cubase works with some (most?) stereo VSTs. Meaning, some stereo VSTs will not sound correct when inserted to audio being played back from a mono track.

One way to get your stereo VSTs to work is to always record on a stereo audio track from your mono bus (like guitar and mic). I posted the discussion below to get some feedback on why would I ever want to record to a mono audio track. To me, nothing discussed really compels me to ever use a mono track (so I NEVER do). Check it out at the link below.

BTW… you can get those stereo VSTs to work properly by adding a stereo audio track to your project then dragging your guitar recording from the mono track to the newly created stereo track. The the audio file and waveform do not change in any way but your stereo VST will work correctly.

For your 2nd concern I really can’t comment on that except to try the above suggestion then do the export again to see if it makes a difference.

BTW… It’s always best to list your software and computer OS specs when asking for assist. You can add these things to your forum signature.

Regards :sunglasses:

Thanks! Forgot to mention that I am running Sequel 3 on a Windows 7 PC. Guitar tracks are being recorded direct through a Zoom G3 effects processor via USB. I am using Asio4All as a driver.

The issue with making stereo your default is you are doubling the processor load for many tracks which do not require to be stereo.