theres 3 different panning modes in cubase, i normally use a plug in though

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lstpj2WXJ8k


on the whole i like mixes that start in mono in the low end, roughly 200 hz down (i normally have a multiband imager on the stereo bus to make sure)

and as you get up into the higher frequencies i like things to be wider, I like my hats panned wide at the moment, and the top ends of synths, cymbals, etc to be fairly wide. Also i like backing vocals/ double tracking nice and wide

Talking about stereo synths, i used to always have the stereo setting on max (for example in the virus or massive they have a similar setting as part of the unison function for stereo width) but now i tend to keep the stereo width more narrow as i found these very wide unison synths can sound a bit nasty, especially in mono, as mentioned above

With vocals, the lead is naturally mono, but it can be nice to give it a bit more width with perhaps a plug in (like ps22) and of course the reverb and delays will give it some width

You can pan the backing vocals nice and wide for a lovely stereo spread which is a nice contrast to the narrow lead vocal

As stereo (or the illusion of stereo in terms of what most of us our doing) is not really 2 mics, but more the difference between the left and right channel sometimes i like to have to slightly different instruments panned hard left and right playing the same music. OR anyway you can create a difference between each channels (eg the haas effect by delaying one side a matter of milliseconds, before it becomes an audible delay)

You can also experiment with mid side encoding - for example clearing the low end out of the mid part of a reverb to create more space in the mix, and a greater feeling of perceived width

Some imaging plug ins are really great, for example i recently used the nugen stereoizer on a Rhodes sound (which was pretty much a mono sound) and i thought it worked great, and even summed well to mono

but yeah, almost all my tracks start as mono, naturally, and either panned dead center or wide as part of a pair for width - but the synths i do use a bit of artificial widening with the unison function

Chris

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Last edited by chris marsh on Feb-20-2014 at 20:01

quote:

Originally posted by chris marsh theres 3 different panning modes in cubase, i normally use a plug in though http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lstpj2WXJ8k

Thanks, that's actually a really neat built in feature of cubase.

quote:

Originally posted by chris marsh on the whole i like mixes that start in mono in the low end, roughly 200 hz down (i normally have a multiband imager on the stereo bus to make sure) and as you get up into the higher frequencies i like things to be wider, I like my hats panned wide at the moment, and the top ends of synths, cymbals, etc to be fairly wide. Also i like backing vocals/ double tracking nice and wide

That's exactly how I mix. The V method. The higher you go in frequency, the wider you can pan.

quote:

Originally posted by chris marsh Talking about stereo synths, i used to always have the stereo setting on max (for example in the virus or massive they have a similar setting as part of the unison function for stereo width) but now i tend to keep the stereo width more narrow as i found these very wide unison synths can sound a bit nasty, especially in mono, as mentioned above With vocals, the lead is naturally mono, but it can be nice to give it a bit more width with perhaps a plug in (like ps22) and of course the reverb and delays will give it some width You can pan the backing vocals nice and wide for a lovely stereo spread which is a nice contrast to the narrow lead vocal As stereo (or the illusion of stereo in terms of what most of us our doing) is not really 2 mics, but more the difference between the left and right channel sometimes i like to have to slightly different instruments panned hard left and right playing the same music. OR anyway you can create a difference between each channels (eg the haas effect by delaying one side a matter of milliseconds, before it becomes an audible delay) You can also experiment with mid side encoding - for example clearing the low end out of the mid part of a reverb to create more space in the mix, and a greater feeling of perceived width Some imaging plug ins are really great, for example i recently used the nugen stereoizer on a Rhodes sound (which was pretty much a mono sound) and i thought it worked great, and even summed well to mono but yeah, almost all my tracks start as mono, naturally, and either panned dead center or wide as part of a pair for width - but the synths i do use a bit of artificial widening with the unison function Chris

All good stuff but I've never got in to mid side funnily enough. I've never found the need - you can do everything required with EQ and pan.

I'm actually having fun with LCR mixing right now and it's quite amazing what you can do with it.