Mix Pre 3 II can't export 2 mono files for stereo?

[jvanhuys]

Hi everyone,

I trust you are well.

For my stereo setup, which uses a two condenser mics. Each mic is plugged into a separate input. I prefer each mic to have it's own mono file exported instead of one combined stereo file. How do I achieve this?

This is super easy to do and works really well on my Zoom F3.

Thanks for your time, I appreciate it.

[Hugh Robjohns]

Zoom f-series recorders can generate either mono-Wav files (separate files for each track), or Poly-Wavs (a file combining all tracks).

Sound Device's MixPre machines can currently only create poly-wavs. (Other SD machines, like the 7-series, can do both).

Sound Devices provide a free converter to download from their website called Wave Agent which can convert poly-wavs into mono-wavs.

https://www.sounddevices.com/product/wa ... -software/

... but most DAWs can now automatically handle poly-wavs with a user option to import into a multitrack stream, or break out into multiple mono streams.

[jvanhuys]

This is really helpful workaround Thank you for sharing, I appreciate it.

To me personally, this is a bit of an advantage for the Zoom. Can't see why SoundDevice can't do this as a firmware update.

But yeah I guess there's no perfect recorder.

[Hugh Robjohns]

No idea why SD haven't offered mono wavs in the MixPre it is available in their 'pro' machines and a firmware update could easily add the facility.

Perhaps they think polywavs make life easier for the kind of customers who would buy a MP3 or 6... and as I said before, most DAWs can break a polywav I to separate tracks anyway.

For me, I mostly record concerts and if recording lots of tracks at a 96k sample rate, the 2GB file size limit means you get lots of polywav files that you have to stitch together. With monowavs its usually possible to get a continuous file of the whole gig per channel, which is a little easier to wrangle into the DAW.