Extremely Strange Panning Issue
Hello All,
First, here's the current rig:
* AMD Ryzen 1700X, 16 GB RAM, SSD, Scarlett 2i4
* Windows 10 (Version 1703)
* Cakewalk Sonar Platinum (Version 23.7.0 Build 37)
* Using ASIO drivers (96000 Hz SR @ 24 bit depth)
Hoping that someone has either heard of this, experienced this or knows what might be causing this... The issue I'm having is independent of a specific project, track or FX/plugin. What's happening is that any time a track is hard panned (literally 100%) I get bleed over into what should be the silent channel. I reproduce this regardless of whether I use the track pan control, channel tools, or even mute a channel on the hardware output in the mix console. What makes it REALLY weird is that if I back the pan control to 96% I ALMOST get a perfect hard pan. Now, my gut instinct was that this was a hardware issue so I swapped to an older first gen 18i8 that I had; no change. I've gone through multiple iterations of isolating and identifying, and the nail in that coffin in my mind was that if I export a single track panned to 100% either direction, the exported WAV exhibits the same issue. If I export a track panned to 96% either direction, I again get an almost (but not quite) perfect hard pan. Recognizing that the audio interface was still a common factor I plugged a set of headphones into the motherboard sound card output and replayed the exported files; same exact issue. To further isolate I copied the audio files to my phone and played back from there... Same result.
I'm at a loss at this point. My gut is that this is likely a Sonar issue (particularly since ASIO exhibits this issue) but clearly Windows is always a layer that must be consider since it cannot be removed from the equation. While I do however feel like Windows is unlikely to be the culprit, who knows...
Anyone seen this? Have any ideas on what to try?
Note: I have verified that I wasn't doing something dumb like having offset mode engaged.
Thanks all! Have a great day/night where you may be!