How does everyone pan stereo channels? (Not quite a newbie question)

[TheBassBagwhan]

I've never worked much with stereo tracks, usually straightforward mono guitars, vocals, drums, etc... with the occasional stereo keys.
Lately I've discovered some awesome stereo patches for guitar sounds and synthetic, but you don't really want them in the middle of your mix.
What's the best method of nudging or moving a stereo pan to either side without diminishing the stereo effect? Meaning, the opposite side to the pan will lose volume, right? Or worse, move closer to the centre where you don't want it?
Hope I'm making sense. Thanks.

 

[FMN-Music]

When it's a wide stereo source, I often prefer Dual Panner to shift it more to one side.

When it's a narrow stereo, the Balance Control works just fine.

You can of course also go full nerd with these kind of plugins.

 

[TheBassBagwhan]

Thanks, I'll keep experimenting!

 

[parityflux]

When it's a wide stereo source, I often prefer Dual Panner to shift it more to one side.

My preference is the built-in Dual Panner as well, and it is part of the channel strip anyway. It is great for shifting a stereo source like how @FMN-Music has shown.

 

[SwitchBack]

What's the context? Home/headphone listening? Or concert panning? Some stereo effects want to be bold where mostly with stereo a little goes a long way. And yeah, when you shift something left (static panning) then you want to shift something right too.

 

[TDF1981]

The normal Pan in Studio One/FSP is actually a balance which, like you already know, uses volume of either side to evoke a kind of panning effect but a broad sound like a stereo concert piano would miss either low or high sound if you pan it extremely to one side. THe Dual pan is a real pan and the wonderful thing is it is not only good for panning but for making a broad recording less broad. So you could first take a recording of a broad background choir, narrow it so that “people are standing closer together” (physically different but let’s trick our brain a bit) and then move that whole narrow choir more to the left or right.

 

[SwitchBack]

Good example. And when you add a stereo room reverb to the choir then that has to be (near) full width again. Unless it's a headphone mix and you want to have the choir in front of you rather than stand amongst them, virtually speaking. Like painting with sound

 

[TDF1981]

Good example. And when you add a stereo room reverb to the choir then that has to be (near) full width again. Unless it's a headphone mix and you want to have the choir in front of you rather than stand amongst them, virtually speaking. Like painting with sound

Painting it is!

 

[TDF1981]

Good example. And when you add a stereo room reverb to the choir then that has to be (near) full width again. Unless it's a headphone mix and you want to have the choir in front of you rather than stand amongst them, virtually speaking. Like painting with sound

And just additional info for newbies crawling the forum: your reverb would need to be wide stereo to represent the physical room where your smaller choir now stands in on one side, because a choir singing on one side of a room still triggers the whole room (=both sides).

 

[lokeyfly]

Indeed on all the above. Just another perspective for

.Lately I've discovered some awesome stereo patches for guitar sounds and synthetic, but you don't really want them in the middle of your mix.
What's the best method of nudging or moving a stereo pan to either side without diminishing the stereo effect?

Since you're discovering the added stereo patches for guitar sounds and such, a really nice effect is recording or keeping your guitar in mono, (as guitars typically have a mono out). Then, run your stereo processing to a stereo bus. Your mono signal will feed that bus. When you have some nice stereo separation on that you like, such as using Guitar Rig, or stereo Fender stomps, use the stereo bus with Dual Panner to fill maybe 80% to each side. As in the choir example, being that somewhat middle plane, then add room reverb to take on that overall fill of room reverberation. Just as what happens naturally. Reverb/wall reflections will disperse that stereo field naturally. You simply decide how much stereo separation you need.

Another option is to explore parallel tracking which make for great options. Be it based on crossover, parallel, and other. Explore different things. Just be careful mic'ing stereo separation as phase issues can enter in.
Have fun!

 

[Olorin]

I was looking for how to change the pan law in FSP. It isn‘t do-able?

 

[TonalDynamics]

As usual, @FMN-Music covers the bases nicely!

Just to add, when you're talking about a nice stereo track or samples as you mention you've found...

Use something like Metric AB, Brainworx Control, or Brainworx SOLO (free utility plugin) to 'MONO solo' the L and R signals independently. A/B them against each other using this method.
You'll almost always prefer one of the sounds; that sound is the one you should favor in your panning.

So to recap on how stereo panning works:

With MONO signals you are moving the channel energy of that single sound source, so the balance panner simply 'places' the sound in the stereo field very accurately from a psychoacoustic perspective.

With STEREO signals, a regular balance panner is still often all you need, it functions the same but the psychoacoustic result is different, as you are turning down two discrete hard-panned signals:
As you pan L, the R signal simply gets reduced in level, and vice versa. There is no 'placing' of either distinct sound source, just a level reduction in the opposite channel.

You can use FMN's technique with the dual panners in certain situations, but a word of caution: this can introduce phasing artifacts by blending near-identical signals if you, for instance, hard panned BOTH L and R to the L channel, you may get comb filtering depending on the microphone setup used and the soundsource. So experiment, but honestly, try to simply use the balance panner in most situations if you can and the signal is well recorded.

Remember when I said to MONO solo each signal and A/B them? You'll generally want the 'strongest' signal to be the prominent one, so if you want to pan it LEFT but you prefer the RIGHT channel, use the Dual Pan native plugin in Studio One to SWAP L and R channels, then simply use the balance panner after it.

So using those methods, experiment and let your ears be your guide!

 

[TheBassBagwhan]

Thanks again, everyone. For the record, I'm talking about what you might call seriously stereo patches in instruments like Massive , and some of the Neural DSP guitar patches. No microphones involved. I'll see what happens with all the excellent advice above. Cheers.

 

[Jemusic]

Many virtual synths are very stereo and wide. One thing you should also do is collapse them into mono and check. I have found that some synths almost disappear when in mono meaning they are using phasing techniques to create the width. In these cases I invert the phase of one of the channels. When you do this the stereo imaging will often stay the same in stereo but mono very well in mono.

It's not always a good thing to say pan two or three very wide synths all hard L and hard R. In this case they are all on top of each other. What I sometimes do is say pan two wide synths, one Hard L and Centre and the second centre and Hard R. This will always mono well but the stereo effect will often be better.

For three synths you could pan one Hard L and hard R and the second one hard L and centre and the third centre and hard R. Or you could pan the first one say 7 o'clock and 10 o'clock, the second 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock and third 2 o'clock and 5 o'clock etc.. Experiment and try it out.

 

[lokeyfly]

Thanks again, everyone. For the record, I'm talking about what you might call seriously stereo patches in instruments like Massive , and some of the Neural DSP guitar patches.

Neural DSP, one of my fav gtr plugs.

No microphones involved. I'll see what happens with all the excellent advice above. Cheers.

With all the info you got, you better get to work. Didn't anyone tell you? They'll be a test on Thursday.