Otto is used completely outside of the DAW (perhaps for now 😉), and for now, mainly before you do any work inside your DAW. For the 'Track Prep' part of your workflow, I suggest the following workflow: > You receive multitracks from a client and download them (likely in your downloads folder) > You create your session like normal, using any templates you currently have. > Move your received tracks into your audio files folder, in a subfolder called something like "Original Tracks" > Drag your tracks into Otto, and do your processing > Export using the "Export Directory" setting "Parent of Import Folder" and "Place Exports In New Folder" checked off. > Drag your newly processed multitracks into your DAW as normal, and continue with your work as normal :) This is personally what I use, if you have a workflow that better suits you, please do so! Otto aims to work with all workflows, so if something isn't quite as efficient as you would like, let me know and I'll try to make some changes :)

Converting to mono isn't as straight forward as you would think; there's a few ways to do it. The most simple, straightforward way, is to just take one of the left or right channels, and use that as your mono file. While this is simple to conceptualize, it has some drawbacks, like a higher signal-to-noise ratio, and if you want to recreate a mix EXACTLY but with mono converted files, you would need to do some volume adjusting. If you would like to keep the same volume of a track in stereo when converted to mono, you'll need to modify the level of the mono file to match the volume of the stereo track. Even if you create the mono file by simply adding the left and right channels together. That's the answer! There's just a volume difference. If you want a more in depth explanation, read on ahead: The reason you need to modify the level is simple to tell, a little more involved to explain: the Pan Law. Say you have a full strength signal panned hard left; there's nothing coming out of the right speaker. If you were to keep the left speaker at full gain ( 0dBFS ), and add in signal from the right speaker to pan slightly right, you'll be clipping. So, that's a problem. That's when the Linear Pan Law comes in to save the day. The Linear Pan Law is an attenuation curve (line, really) that decreases the output gain with respect to the pan angle, the same amount for every change in pan angle. The curve is such that when applied to both channels, the sum of the gain of the two channels' signals at any pan angle is 0dB, in other words, the sum of the gain never changes no matter what pan angle you set it at. In order to keep the sum of the gain at 0dB in the center, each signal needs to be attenuated by about -6dB from the maximum amplitude (full signal at either side if panned hard left or right). So, if you were to compare just the left signal of the stereo file with a hard panned left mono signal, to the newly converted mono signal, the newly converted mono signal would be -3dB from the left channel of the stereo file. This is because the channels were summed with each left and right signal attenuated by -6dB. If the stereo file had the mono signal panned center, at the adjusted volume of -6dB, the newly converted mono signal would be at -3dBFS, and the left channel of the centered mono signal in the stereo file would be -6dBFS. So, you can see by just panning from hard left, to the center, there's a gain difference (of just one channel, not the sum) of -6dB. Dang!! So, to properly null out your files, you need to know a couple things: - The Pan Law you used to convert the stereo file - The pan angle the mono signal was at "inside" the stereo file From these things, you can calculate the difference in gain of the signals (one channel of the split-to-mono method or the sum method, to the output file from Otto) to properly align the gain when null testing. There are other Pan Laws, that use different equations, to solve different problems. For example, to keep the volume about the same when panning, typically we use (and is default in most systems), the Constant Power Law, to avoid the huge volume dip in the center that Linear Panning has. Then you can mix different Pan Laws together to get even more attenuation curves, but that's out of the scope of this question :) Hope that clears things up! So to sum up: You'll need to adjust the volume of the tracks to match. If you don't want to calculate anything, you can just start with one track at a lower volume and increase it until you get next to nothing coming out of your speakers. You'll also find that when comparing the mono converted track to the original stereo file with a mono signal, that the volume is the same when you pan the mono track to the same angle the mono signal in the stereo file is. This means no volume adjustments needed, just pan your mono tracks to where they should be, and your mix will be EXACTLY as it was when it had all stereo files! *except in cases where the signal is really hot, where the conversion would cause clipping. Otto peak normalizes the signal to 0dBFS if clipping is detected to preserve the audio in favor over making the mono track louder + clipping :)

Otto favors keeping the audio fidelity over making hard volume adjustments that can cause the signals to clip. If a track is hot enough near 0dBFS, it's possible the track could clip when converting to mono the 'right' way (maintaining the perceived volume). If doing this would cause the file to clip, Otto just sets (peak normalizes) the file to be the loudest it can be without causing any clipping to occur; which is 0dBFS. While the volume difference between the stereo version and mono version won't be 0, it's a small difference depending on the angle the signal is at and the volume it's at in either channel in stereo. After all, what good is clipped audio for mixing? 😉