Proper Stereo Panning

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:12 pm

Shoot me if this is too obvious but...

One thing that bugs me about live is not having independent control of panning on the left and right channels of a stereo pair.

After much twiddling, I came up with this.

Track 3 has a Utility the same as track 1 but with the right-hand channel selected.

Use the pan knobs on tracks 1 and 3 to adjust the width and position of the sound stage. The pan knob on track 2 still works as a ballance control.

It's useful on percussion tracks - bongos, tablas, that kind of thing - where different instruments are spread accross the sound stage. You can create a more ralistic effect by narrowing the sound stage and placing it where the imaginary percusionist might be sitting.

n

supster · Post by **supster** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:24 pm

how is this different from putting a Utility plugin in your channel, then using the "width" control to spread the stereo and using pan to push the whole thing left or right?
.

Machinate · Post by **Machinate** » Fri Oct 07, 2005 11:36 pm

supster wrote:how is this different from putting a Utility plugin in your channel, then using the "width" control to spread the stereo and using pan to push the whole thing left or right?
.

Pan doesn't "push things" in any direction, it turns the individual volumes up and down... IOW, it doesn't work like it would if you were panning two mono signals, and in more words... it's not Pan at all, it's actually a balance knob... You may detect by my tone, that I've complained about this before

Best,
Andy

nolus · Post by **nolus** » Sat Oct 08, 2005 8:05 am

Machinate wrote:
supster wrote:how is this different from putting a Utility plugin in your channel, then using the "width" control to spread the stereo and using pan to push the whole thing left or right?
.
Pan doesn't "push things" in any direction, it turns the individual volumes up and down... IOW, it doesn't work like it would if you were panning two mono signals, and in more words... it's not Pan at all, it's actually a balance knob... You may detect by my tone, that I've complained about this before

Best,
Andy

What Machinate said

plus the width control attenuates (and ultimately removes) things from the center of the mix, which screws up the balance between different elements in the track. In fact if you set the width to 200% and then mix the result to mono you will end up with silence - ((L-R)+(R-L)).

Also you can use this trick to swap the left and right channels completely.

[edit] you _can_ get a simillar effect using just one track by using a utility to _narrow_ the stereo width and then panning the result left and right, but, unless you make it completly mono, you still get some crossfading between the left and right channels.[/edit]