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Six panning tips for perfect width

1 The old-school way to approach panning is by using the L-C-R technique, whereby you only pan elements to one of three positions: the far left, dead centre, or far right. However, modern productions hardly ever use this, so we’d only advise this method if you want a retro-sounding mix.

2 As a general guide, you’ll want to keep the most important elements (kick, bass, snare, lead vocal) as close to the centre of the mix as possible. Furthermore, the less ‘important’ the sound in the context of the track, and the fewer low frequencies it contains, the wider out to the sides you can pan it.

3 While we’re on the topic of panning ‘rules’, here’s another one: it helps to keep your mix’s left-to-right pan distribution reasonably symmetrical. If one sound is panned to the far right, your mix will begin to sound lopsided unless you push another sound out to the opposite side.

4 For subtle stereo width, try panning elements apart by very small amounts. Try your kick and snare panned one or two degrees apart, one hi-hat panned a tiny bit to one side, and another hat more to the opposite, until your least important elements are the widest ones.

5 Subtle panning is also good if you’ve got lots of similar parts (multiple synths, for example) either layered on top of each other, or interplaying in a ‘call and answer’ fashion. Help them to pop apart by slightly spacing them around the stereo field.

6 Finally, try panning entire buses by near-imperceptible amounts. For example, pan your entire drum bus by a very slight amount to the left, then your bass bus by the same amount to the opposite side of the stereo field. Subtle, but effective!