Cakewalk Sonar Interleave

In Sonar (like most DAWs) you can have both mono and stereo audio on the tracks, however next to the pan slider on
each track there is also a mono/stereo button. This affects how the track is sent to the next step in its routing (bus, master
bus, etc).
Obviously if you have stereo audio you'll want to keep it in stereo, but also if you are using stereo plugins on mono tracks
such as reverb you'll also want it set to stereo as otherwise the reverb will be collapsed to mono.
channel interleave button to mono, which causes Sonar to sum the left and right channels
So even if you have mono audio, doesn't mean you have to have the tracks set to mono. It does no harm having them set
to stereo, so I would just carry on doing what you're doing. I've been caught out before wondering why the stereo reverb
on a track was coming out in mono, and it took me a while to realise it was those damn buttons
Even though I usually use reverb with sends and buses, the best way to demonstrate is using a reverb plugin.
Load up a mono vocal track and leave it panned centre. Add a stereo reverb plugin as an insert and get a fairly large,
wide reverb going.
Toggle the switch and make up your own mind about what it does...
Changing tracks’ mono/stereo status
SONAR has a Mono/Stereo button in each track module in the Track Inspector and Console view. The buttons in the
track modules force each track to play in either stereo or mono, but preserve the tracks’ pan positions in the stereo mix.
The Mono/Stereo button in each track forces the track’s audio signal to enter any patched plug-ins as either mono or
stereo, whether or not the tracks are mono or stereo. This allows you to use either mono effects on a stereo track or
stereo effects on a mono track.
To use a track’s Stereo/Mono button

Note: You may lose important stereo data by using mono effects with stereo tracks because your stereo tracks are
summed to mono in order to pass through the effect. If you never want your stereo data to be summed to mono, select
stereo.
1.Open the Track Inspector or Console view.
In the track you want to force to either mono or stereo for processing effects, click the Stereo/Mono button to the
2.desired position:
When the button is lit, the track streams in stereo.
When the button is unlit, the track streams in mono.
Mono audio clips may be increased by 3 dB in certain scenarios
There are some situations where the level of a mono clip will be increased by 3 dB if the track's output interleave
(mono/stereo toggle) is set to mono:
If the track has mixed stereo and mono clipsThe track has a synth selected as its input source
Input Echo is enabled or the track is armed for recording
In summary, whenever the track output interleave is mono and the data interleave is stereo, mono data will be increased
in level by 3 dB.
Using mono VST plug-ins on stereo tracks may cause out of sync audio
When using a mono VST plug-in on a stereo track (interleave set to Stereo), the left and right channels will be out of sync.
The left channel is processed by the mono effect, and delay compensation is applied, while the right channel is not
processed and does not have delay compensation applied. The signal will look something like this:
Left channel: Wet signal (delayed)
Right channel: Dry signal (no delay)
A mono VST plug-in will work correctly if Enable Mono Processing is checked in the VST Plug-in Properties dialog box
and the track interleave is set to mono.

Note: Enable Mono Processing is enabled by default in SONAR. If you are playing back a legacy project in SONAR
and notice the project does not sound the same, try to disable Enable Mono Processing for any mono plug-ins used in
the project.

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