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Originally posted by jupiterone there are stuff i have in my collection that has absolutely horrible quality mixing and production, but the idea is so friggin phenomenal and deep it makes you want to listen over and over and over. no offense to anyone, of course.

No offense taken, but the whole "wanting to listen over and over" is just your opinon in the state that you are probably not an audiophile but many producers and sound engineers are. Ideas are nice but seldom do ideas alone see the light of day.

People seem to be ignorant towards panning but leaving everything on the center channel is the best way to make the worst sounding mix and not everyone realizes this.

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Originally posted by BERTIE-AHERN its all about locations locations and locations in the mix!!

+1

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Originally posted by echosystm it is not as simple as everyone wants to think it is. if you are dealing with a mono source, then yes the pan law can be ignored as you can reduce/increase the volume when you pan. however, if you are dealing with stereo sounds, you obviously cannot reduce the volume of particular areas of that sound. hence, the effect of the pan law becomes more obvious. cubase has always used a trianglar-ish pan law, from memory, although you probably have a choice about it these days. what people fail to realise about circular pan laws, is that the center is not 0db (it may be -3, etc.). in a triangular law, the center is at 0db, and drops off in a linear fashion. in a circular pan law, the harshness of the curve can make songs sound very mono. when you pan something away from the center, it usually will seem louder, as you have seperated it from other sounds. hence, the triangular law is easier to work with, as the circular law will boost that sound and make it stand out too much. IMO.

+1 i agree with you completely here. Its not as simple as people think, a balanced frequency distribution is just as important as any other production aspect in a mix.

quote:

Originally posted by echosystm it is not as simple as everyone wants to think it is. if you are dealing with a mono source, then yes the pan law can be ignored as you can reduce/increase the volume when you pan. however, if you are dealing with stereo sounds, you obviously cannot reduce the volume of particular areas of that sound. hence, the effect of the pan law becomes more obvious. cubase has always used a trianglar-ish pan law, from memory, although you probably have a choice about it these days. what people fail to realise about circular pan laws, is that the center is not 0db (it may be -3, etc.). in a triangular law, the center is at 0db, and drops off in a linear fashion. in a circular pan law, the harshness of the curve can make songs sound very mono. when you pan something away from the center, it usually will seem louder, as you have seperated it from other sounds. hence, the triangular law is easier to work with, as the circular law will boost that sound and make it stand out too much. IMO.

lets put this idea to the test. take and audio track and route it to a bus. for the audio track use some simple repetative drum sound i.e. 909 hat. make sure the volumes on both of the tracks are set to 0. take note of the level registering on the bus channel. now pan the sample to the side. if the volume at the bus changes, you know that its being affected by the panning. if it is, move the fader so that the original volume is registering. this way you can pan something and retain the original volume. i am about to test this in logic. ill let you guys know how it goes.

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Originally posted by Nightshift And I think that people who dont think about these things have their tracks suffer due to poor mixing and lack of proper use of the stereo field.

^_^

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Originally posted by Nightshift And I think that people who dont think about these things have their tracks suffer due to poor mixing and lack of proper use of the stereo field.

All right then.

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At the end of the day it just does not matter. Just do what sounds good. When i produce ambient and trip hop music i use the stereo field quite extensively. When i am making a dance record i will usually leave things in the center, maybe panning some percussion sounds and effects. I will certainly not hard pan any low frequency sounds within a dance mix. A lot of nightclubs still use mono systems and this is the reason for keeping things center.

Better to go on a case-by-case basis. Just follow your ears.

___________________
When bread becomes toast, it can never go back to being bread again.

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Originally posted by Nightshift People seem to be ignorant towards panning but leaving everything on the center channel is the best way to make the worst sounding mix and not everyone realizes this.

Right. But on the other hand I often hear mixes that seems like the producer just panned the sounds randomly in the stereo field.
Which also makes for a pretty horrible sounding mix. There's so much more to it than just panning.
There's stereo chorus and phaser effects, stereo imagers/enhancers, ping-pong delays, reverb, unison spread on synths and more.

quote:

Originally posted by Eldritch Right. But on the other hand I often hear mixes that seems like the producer just panned the sounds randomly in the stereo field. Which also makes for a pretty horrible sounding mix. There's so much more to it than just panning. There's stereo chorus and phaser effects, stereo imagers/enhancers, ping-pong delays, reverb, unison spread on synths and more.

+1 agreed. I believe that panning is about aiming towards even frequency distribution and seperation of sounds. Of course if you pan sounds without reason or rhyme then a mix is more than likely to sound horrible.

I'm just sayin for people who say paying attention to these aspects is a waste of time, that Panorama and how things are located across the horizontal stereofield is just as important in a mix's production as anything else.