Pan like a pro
Old-school panning is a mixing staple. Rotate a DAW channel’s pan pot to the left, and your host will turn down the level of the right channel by a corresponding amount, which results in the signal moving over to the left side of the mix. And vice versa: the more you rotate a pan pot to the right, the more the left channel is turned down. By placing different sounds at different pan positions, you can fill out the stereo field and create an interesting mix when heard on stereo speakers and headphones.
Auto-panning plugins, meanwhile, use an LFO or modulator signal to automatically pan elements back and forth from left to right. Autopan is a great widening effect when it’s used on sounds such as incidental rides, shakers, tambourine loops or FX, as it can give them regimented stereo movement and ‘bounce’. Plus, auto-panned sounds usually fold down to mono pretty well, providing that you don’t push the width too far. If you need to take autopanning further than your DAW’s stock plugin will allow, Cableguys’ free PanCake 2 allows you to draw in modulation curves for the ultimate in pan customisation.
Moving on, let’s envisage a stereo drum kit signal containing a left-panned hi-hat part. Using regular channel panning, the further right we push it, the quieter the left-sided hat will become as the DAW turns down that left channel. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a more advanced way to pan sounds? There is, and it’s called ‘dual’ or ‘combined’ panning. Both Steinberg’s Cubase (with its Stereo Combined Panner option) and Ableton Live (called Dual Panning, new in v10) allow you to right-click a channel’s pan control and switch it to this dual mode, giving you two parameters to adjust – one for the left, another for right – so you can pan the L and R sides independently. This is a good move when you want to carefully position or pocket a signal’s width and position. For example, you can pan the left side of a signal to around 75, but restrict the right side’s pan to 25, which will rein in the left side a little, but narrow the right side even more.