[ddots-l] Re: Thoughts on panning?
- From: "Dan Rugman" <danrugman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 3 Jun 2006 20:51:21 +0100
This one's really a matter of personel taste, but hears my thoughts for what
they're worth!
To be honest most people only really mix for speakers and don't worry about
headphones. Still, good mixes tend to sound fine on both.
When you're doing electronic music then pritty much anything goes since the
whole thing is clearly unreal anyway. But I think for static mixes of a band
or orchestra, when you're trying to keep it real, its best to keep things a
little in from the edges. I find it a bit strange hearing instruments panned
hard left and right (100% L or R) because it sounds a little unnatural. The
only time I think this works is if two instruments are playing the same thing,
in which case it can fill the sound out a bit to put each one on opposit sides.
To be on the safe side I usually stick to about 70-80% on the left for first
violins and the same on the right for cellos. I think the same set up would
probably work for you're two guitars with their interplay.
The other thing to think about is reverbs. If you want a really natural
acoustic effect then you need to rout everything to one or more busses and and
apply reverbs to those. If you only apply reverbs to each track then the
reverb will be panned along with the dry signal which sounds really bizarre.
By using busses the panned tracks are given reverb that makes it sound far more
real. The only thing is that you can't pann fully to the left or right this
way because the reverb will pull it back towards the centre, not that I really
find this to be a problem.
One thing you could do is find some recordings with mixes you really like and
listen really closely to the panning and reverbs to see how they did it and
then try to get the same effect yourself.
Dan
----- Original Message -----
From: Stephanie Pieck
To: ddots-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 4:40 PM
Subject: [ddots-l] Thoughts on panning?
While I think the effects of panning are really cool, I'm curious to know
what other people think of this question. If you are creating music that might
be listened to using headphones, what is the most extreme panning you would
use? For instance, if you have two electric guitar tracks or drum tracks, and
you want to highlight the interplay between them by placing them on opposite
sides of the mix, how far to the left and right is too far?
Thanks for any ideas.
Stephanie
Other related posts:
