A real panning knob

[ze2be]

Aha.. So thats why some unbalanced stereo samples of acoustic hihats etc looses energy when naroving the stereo image with just using 1 instance of the Utility plug, setting the stereo parameter to zero.

That always bugged me a bit.

Nice tip Angstrom, im gonna build a utility style rack like this!

[Angstrom]

Oh, I should mention a good binaural panning rack which does a good Haas pan.

Renzu binaural panner. Available from here:
http://www.seanny.net/renzutools/

I tend to make my own depending on circumstance, but this is a good one - and it will show you how a psycho-acoustic hard pan is actually quite audible in the opposing stereo side.

be aware of mono compatibility issues with a basic Hass panner like this though, there are reasons the old Pan-pot was invented.

[HamHat]

Do u guys actually really care about this? Has his ever gotten in the way of your work? or did u see this youtube video and wanted to complain? Lets see some examples

Mike

Nah we don't care about the quality of our music, thanks for bringing this to our attention!!!

[H20nly]

be aware of mono compatibility issues with a basic Hass panner like this though, there are reasons the old Pan-pot was invented.

can you explain that term in this context please?

i get it that a typical stereo signal is going to result in more of a lower volume in speaker A vs. speaker B situation... but trying to think the quote above through keeps making my eyes roll back in my head. unless it simply means "it won't work at all".

[Angstrom]

Explain mono compatibility of a Haas panner?
well, Haas/psychoacoustic panning has two components, frequency and delay. It emulates how sounds actually travel through air to human ears, rather than the lowering of volume, which is how a pan-pot works and while that system is mono-safe (why it was invented), it is not 100% great.

In haas panning - frequency
The frequency part simulates how your head acts as a meat-baffle for high frequencies, and rolls off sounds in the upper spectrum on the ear facing away from the origin. So when listening to a sound originating hard left, while your left ear hears a full frequency, your right ear hears a muffled version.

In haas panning - delay
The delay simulates how sounds arrive slightly later to the ear furthest from the sound origination. The difference is a very few milliseconds, and is variant on position. So: when listening to a sound ten feet (3 meters) away to your hard left, your left (origin facing) ear hears the sound 9ms after it originated, but your right ear hears it at 10 ms. 1 ms being the time sound takes to get around your head.


Mono Compatibility of Haas : Stuck Flange
That Haas panning rack I linked to includes a delay, and as with all those 'stereo widening' type effects which use delay difference between stereo sides - when such an effect is L+R added, summed to mono, you can tend to hear a "stuck flange" effect. That particular rack comes with a 'mono safe' mode to avoid that, if you like.

Try it
As I said - I use a slightly different approach, but that rack is a nice introduction to simply download and try. Put headphones on, pan with rack, watch stereo meters. Be amazed. When you hear a sound panned like this it suddenly puts the plain old volume lowering pan-pot to shame

----

Edit : I dug up a nice article I read a while back which triggered my interest in this field :

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/nov10/a ... essing.htm

the real basis of two?channel stereo as we know it today dates from the pioneering work of Alan Blumlein and his EMI colleagues in the early 1930s. Blumlein realised that sound reproduction using multiple speakers inherently means that both ears hear all of the speakers. Consequently, trying to reproduce time?of?arrival differences captured by spaced microphones would be extremely problematic: the physical spacing of the speakers relative to the listener would add further time?of?arrival differences, compromising the accuracy of the imaging

It should be said that all my talk of psycho-acoustic panning is slightly off the main subject of 'how to pan stereo sources like ProTools does', but there you go, that's the internet for you. Typical.

[H20nly]

typical... but appreciated.

thanks!

[2beats]

I have heard a lot about panning in ableton live. I just wrote an article on panning with live and how to improve it with the Utility. With Utility you can get a lot out of panning in live. I also developed a binaural panner and will be posting more about that soon.




http://www.subaqueousmusic.com/producti ... r-your-mix

[Matt_Quinn]

+1, and thank you for the reminder - I've been meaning to see if there's a Max for Live device for this, and there is - I'm gonna try it out right now:

http://www.maxforlive.com/library/devic ... an-enabler

So I had been trying this out & was pretty pleased with the way it worked, until I realized it totally screws your Undo history. It also doesn't really work for panning individual elements in drum racks, which was one of the major ways I'd use it. I downloaded and saved those Pan Law racks instead, which seem to work pretty well, and leave your Undo history intact.

[regretfullySaid]

I was doing the same thing in a drum rack the other day and forgot that it latches onto the track panning. I started modifying it to link to the chains pan, but it's a little more complicated than that and I couldn't spend the time finishing it. (The main issue is back-tracking through any devices that may be between the panning device and the chains mixer pan)

As far as the undo history, I'm sure if you uncheck a certain setting that live.observers/objects have (can't remember the name but it's at the bottom of the inspector around where 'Parameter Enable' would be, that would stop actions from going to the undo history.

Ah, and I just remember that there are a couple constant metros banging every 10 seconds and 15 seconds, so that may have something to do with it. Pretty sure it's to make sure the device stays linked to the right track. That could probably be swapped with a better technique.

[Danny_DJ]

+ 1 for a real panning OPTION. abletons, please color code the pans or give us a button right above the pan. For anyone around in the centercode community from Ableton (that's where the support sends all guys to share their ideas and which is monitored by the specification theam and developers): I posted a suggestion: https://ableton.centercode.com/project/ ... BB02336132}
Feel free to up-vote it go gain visibility.

+ thumbs up for all the other posters sharing their techniques. will try them