Nice open sound?

**This is a question about Panning Laws**

I've been noticing a clear difference between my mixes and those of professionals. In the past, I never did much with panning and everything was usually mixed in stereo.

But now after a little experimentation, I've noticed that when I pan certain tracks, the sound of my mixes becomes a lot more open and spacious. I truly believe this is one of the key elements in distinguishing an amateur mix from a professional mix.

Correct me if I'm wrong but this is how I see it:

If you pan everything in the center, then all your sounds are struggling to get through the middle passage of the monitors. But when you pan some of the tracks left or right, more room becomes available for the sonic waves to pass through each speaker. Is this correct?

With that in mind, where can I learn more about panning laws and how to use them to my advantage? Alan Moulder (mixing engineer for Nine Inch Nails and dozens of other bands) create absolutely wonderful mixes and it's like every single sound is able to get through.

Thanks guys!

if you look at the techniques part of the forum that has got a lot of pointers also..

remember years ago records were recorded in mono , so having the space at either / left or right or centre is no biggy.. you really make room by the eq.. remember you want both channels to be pretty balanced with each other..

it might even come down to the genre you do... e.g. if your making music for dance dj's... normally they monitor in mono .. so you want the kick drum centre and the snare for reference for them.. same with sub bass.. as some cabinets have only 1 subwoofer, and that stops any phasing problems.

panning a bit either way is nice to make the music move around, if that make sense.. but think about the places where the music is played.. you don't want it totally hard panned ot one side, as the left or right speaker might be far apart from the other one.. so you need signal to go to both.

think of it like.... when a car passes you... or a plane flies over.. you don't hear a constant volume.. it goes left to right.. it gives you movement.. hopefully that makes sense.. .it for me just gives your music movement.. but if you pan to far left / right .. well it's not used on everything.. and best to leave some signal going to the other speaker

mixing / mastering etc.. is a deep subject. if you learn all the components on their own and why people do x-y-z to a mix, in time it begins to make sense.

Greetings A. S.,

Panning laws really don't make much difference unless you are using automation to move things around in the mix. If the positions are fixed, then the different laws just affect the relative levels, but you are going to control that in the mix anyway, so it really doesn't matter.

Regards,
David

+1

One common mistake is recording too many stereo tracks.

Tracks should be mono unless there is a truly compelling reason for recording them in stereo, e.g. an actual stereo source such as a Leslie speaker or a drum kit.

Too many stereo tracks result in what Craig Anderton calls "big mono" - those stereo tracks can't be properly panned and the result is a muddy panorama.

Of course, an even more common mistake is clumsy or heavy-handed use of compression and limiting. That erases the "hair" - all the fine detail in the dynamics.

David (dcastle), I wasn't responding to you... my comment was responding to the OP. No worries.

And +1 on the mono tracking - with the "stereo" output of all this stuff you end up with more combs than a barber college....

Mono sources are so much easier to localize and place in-field.