FXpansion VST to RTAS Adapter and Mono Plugins

I guess this isn’t really a trick, but since I don’t often read manuals for software this option went unnoticed for a long time. I was always cursing that some of my favorite plugins would only work on stereo tracks. This was a big pain in the ass for gates (like ReaGate, which I prefer over the digi Dyn3 Expander/Gate because there’s no latency) and especially for guitar amps (like the awesome Nick Crow 7170, 8505 and LePou SoloC). By default these show up in the wrapper program as stereo plugins, which means they would only show up on stereo tracks. I did NOT know this was a user assignable parameter! I’ve been using this program for over a year! Facepalm. See the picture below, click to enlarge.

So just for fun I looked up what the manual has to say about this:

CanMono

This column reports whether a plug-in can operate in mono. If a mono to stereo

or stereo to stereo plug-in can operate in mono, it will also appear as a mono

plug-in in Pro Tools. This parameter is user-editable, so that you can force plug-

ins to operate in mono.

Yep, I’m an idiot. I wish I knew about this a year ago!

I hope this helps someone else, it certainly made my last mix better.