Thanks, I have no idea how I missed that!

If it not essential to keep the tracks discrete, you could create a third audio stereo track and then only have one envelope to deal with.

That's actually what I originally tried to do but couldn't figure out how to combine two audio tracks into one.

Use an audio bus.

I do this all the time not only with just two tracks (L+R), but many tracks in multi-track projects. Send L and R to a stereo bus. Then add a volume envelope to the bus (making sure audio buses are visible on your timeline, of course), leaving the original L and R tracks alone. (Pretty much what DonaldT recommended; I just emphasize the use of a bus.)

The only kind of bus I know is the one you ride on to go somewhere :-) I've never used a bus before in Vegas so that takes what Donald said, which I don't know how to do, and amplifies it.. The copy and paste is working ok for me, but I will read up on what buses are and how to use them.

If you do anything in audio with Vegas that gets more complicated than a stereo track, especially mixing multi-track audio, buses will become your new best friend. Or, pretty much a required friend.

Basically, you can bounce any number of tracks to a bus, buses to a new bus, each with their own audio FX, panning, volume, etc. They're a very powerful tool. I just completed a project with 17 vocalists. Using your method, I would have had to copy and paste volume envelopes, FX, panning, etc. 16 times. Instead, I tweaked what I needed for each vocalist track, then sent 17 tracks to a single bus, and from there I controlled overall FX and volume envelopes. Once. Pretty much as easy as it sounds.

Actually, you already use a bus but might not know it: the master audio bus. You can expose it in the timeline, but by default it is hidden.

Hmm, I can't figure out how to make a stereo track out of two mono tracks either. Looks like a bus is the way to go.The Magical Mystery Tour.

Fortunately, this is as complex as it gets with my audio needs in Vegas. I understand the concept you explained though and they do sound very useful in the situation you described.

@DonaldT, I don't think there is a way, but I would be OK proven wrong.

Further example: if I record in stereo, ingest into Vegas onto a stereo track, I believe that L+R are panned hard L and R, respectively. In essence, L and R are baked. Your choice is take it or leave it. This is bad if, for instance, I have a 'hole' in the middle of my stereo image, and I just want to reduce L and R pan. Can't do it.

In contrast, if you record two separate mono tracks from your L and R microphones (or from one stereo mic), you can control panning of your L and R tracks fully and independently (e.g., 80%, not 100%), whilst using a stereo bus for all other purposes, such as FX and volume, that affects both tracks simultaneously.

"I can't figure out how to make a stereo track out of two mono tracks either"
- You can render any number of tracks to a new stereo track/file, "Tools> Render to new track" I recall seeing a script that did that as well.
There's third-party apps too, (Wave Agent comes to mind).
But there's really no sense to it unless they were recorded as a stereo pair.

Yeah, I knew you could render to a stereo track. There is a built in script that breaks a stereo into two monos, but no vice-versa. Maybe somebody has written one.

Well, the thing is that two mono tracks made from a stereo file are still pointing to that one single stereo file. No new media has been created. You could perform the same operation yourself in about 4 seconds with a very few mouse clicks. That's all the script is doing anyway. This is possible because Vegas includes the ability to have an audio event on the timeline use only one track of a source file.

What Vegas does not include is a way to have a single stereo event point to multiple audio files to use as the two channels. A script to do this would have to render to a new file. It's quite possible, but perhaps the demand has been so low as to not warrant anyone bothering.

One could always submit a feature request if one felt obliged.

What Vegas does not include is a way to have a single stereo event point to multiple audio files to use as the two channels.

This looks like a kludge of a solution that is executed brilliantly instead by one audio bus. Hence, I'm not sure why one (or SCS) would even want to entertain a reinvention of the wheel, so to speak.

Looking back many years, I think I might have wanted the same 'solution', especially since the occasional reference here to audio buses intimidated me at the time. But once I started multi-tracking, I spent part of an evening learning how to use buses, and I never looked back.

[I]"This looks like a kludge of a solution that is executed brilliantly instead by one audio bus. Hence, I'm not sure why one (or SCS) would even want to entertain a reinvention of the wheel, so to speak."[/I]

Not at all. Whatever you put on the buss tracks doesn't behave the same as what's on the T/L and that makes editing a problem. I recently got back a movie soundtrack which a post house had turned into a 5.1 mix. They kindly rendered out stubs for me however each of the 5.1 tracks were 6 mono channels. Sure no problem panning each track and assigning it to a bus however if I have to edit the vision it'll be doing a lot of praying that Vegas keeps those 30 tracks together.

I could render each mono track to a multitrack wave file, I've done this in the past several times to keep things easier to work with. It would make serious audio post work much easier though if Vegas handled this issue for us.

Bob.

Whatever you put on the buss tracks doesn't behave the same as what's on the T/L and that makes editing a problem."

Hmmm, yes, I've run into that. For instance, cuts and fades on audio events can't be implemented on a bus, of course. Is this what you mean? Something else? I wasn't thinking of all of editing and/or synchronized audio/video, but rather the OP's need to make stereo from two mono, but I might have assumed too much.