The Great Unsolvable Problem

[struknes]

So I've posted this problem here and Gearslutz, but it appears no one is clever enough to solve it. Here's one more rephrasing of the question, before I bite down and solve it myself.

Problem: Why, when you group tracks, does the main group track give you signal information for all the grouped tracks, right up the center? Obviously it's b/c the main group track is panned center, but there's no clear way to deactivate its pan. What do I mean by "main group track"? I mean the track that's holding all the tracks in the group.

E.g., I group a conga and a harmonica. I pan the conga left -40. I pan the harmonica right +40. Man these two are really playing. They're about to win a Grammy for this performance. The harmonica player is really laying into it, like he's cleaning an NES cartridge, and the conga player is trying to break the skin. But there's a problem: the conga and the harmonica are both audible right up the center, even though they're panned left and right! Solo the main group track, and you hear them, dead center. "Well, I'll just mute the main group track then, so I can only hear the group members panned left and right." You try that. Oops, now you can't hear ANY of the tracks.

So you come to realize that while the harmonica and conga want to live on the left and right at -40 and +40, they can only do that if their evil twins inhabit the center and step all over your lead vocal, which is a European West Sudanese man crooning meters of poetry that the world will never understand.

[struknes]

Nevermind. I think I might just be confused. Maybe it just SOUNDS like the left and right tracks are in the center, but in fact, the left and right are just creating a phanton image of sorts by nature of being played in about the same frequency range.

It's not actually a conga and harmonica I'm dealing with; it's two identical electric guitar parts played on the same guitar, on the same setting, with the same processing. The two parts are not just duplicates of a copied track, but they are the same guitar, guitar pickup settings, and processing are the same.

One is panned almost hard left, the other almost hard right. When you pan them hard left and right, there's no appearance of center information. But if you take them both off of hard pan (i.e. a little toward the center) you get this sound of there being a signal dead center, and it's right up front; prominent.

[Stromkraft]

if you take them both off of hard pan (i.e. a little toward the center) you get this sound of there being a signal dead center, and it's right up front; prominent.

The phantom image dead center, the mid, is what is in both sides, left and right.

Do you by any chance use some kind of mid/side treatment anywhere? Mid/side potentially destroys pans.

[struknes]

if you take them both off of hard pan (i.e. a little toward the center) you get this sound of there being a signal dead center, and it's right up front; prominent.

The phantom image dead center, the mid, is what is in both sides, left and right.

Do you by any chance use some kind of mid/side treatment anywhere? Mid/side potentially destroys pans.

I don't think I'm using a mid-side treatment, but I'll look into it. Thanks for the reply!

[fishmonkey]

i for one am appreciating your dramatic flair.

muting the group track should mute both sounds if they are contained within the group. that is more or less the whole point of group tracks—funneling the individual tracks through one group track. a group track is essentially a quick way and neat way to organise a bunch of tracks into a bus, without having to do a bunch of manual routing.

btw, all of Live's tracks are stereo, and the track mute (and solo) buttons always affect both the left and right channels at the same time.

[pale1]

Depending on the processing of the guitar tracks, there might be a lot of "stereo information" ( Dual cabs, stereo delays, chorus etc. )
Maybe thats the issue..

Check this out :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQdfMy8SRus