thanks to Anderton for a thorough and easy to understand reply.   

How do you deal with the extra gain when panned left or right? Just keep everything safely below 0 so you don't have to be concerned with it?

When I mix, I start with the kick drum (95% of the time) and then go from there. So i'm adding a track at a time to the mix, so when I pan a track, there are no extras gains as that track has been mixed with the pan position already set.
 
When mixing, 99.99% of the time the instruments are panned to a position and the pan position is not moved. So there are no extra 'surprise' peaks. So there really isn't any extra gain. For tracks that I have pan automation on (left to right or right to left), I simply use a volume envelope to subdue  it when it reaches the center. But that is not often.
 
When mixing any project from 2 tracks to 200 tracks, your track faders are set in a way that you should never clip as the more tracks you have, the lower each fader must be.
 
Does that clear it up??
 
Cj
 

CJaysMusic

How do you deal with the extra gain when panned left or right? Just keep everything safely below 0 so you don't have to be concerned with it?

 
When I mix, I start with the kick drum (95% of the time) and then go from there. So i'm adding a track at a time to the mix, so when I pan a track, there are no extras gains as that track has been mixed with the pan position already set.
 
Does that clear it up??
 
Cj

Yes, I assume this means you rarely move projects between hosts (which is enough of a PITA without having to worry about panning laws!). For example Cubase, Audition, and Sonar all default to different panning laws.
 
But it's also a personal preference thing. I always start mixes off in mono to adjust EQ, and get a rough on the levels. So for me, panning almost always occurs after levels. 

Anderton

CJaysMusic

How do you deal with the extra gain when panned left or right? Just keep everything safely below 0 so you don't have to be concerned with it?

 
When I mix, I start with the kick drum (95% of the time) and then go from there. So i'm adding a track at a time to the mix, so when I pan a track, there are no extras gains as that track has been mixed with the pan position already set.
 
Does that clear it up??
 
Cj

Yes, I assume this means you rarely move projects between hosts (which is enough of a PITA without having to worry about panning laws!). For example Cubase, Audition, and Sonar all default to different panning laws.

Honestly, how many times does someone transfer volume/level and pan envelopes from host to host? When I transfer my legacy of SONAR projects to the new DAW I just bring in the wave files and mix it again.
 
 

Naw, I do not use multiple host. If i'm sending an OMF file, ill put in the track notes or mixing notes that the pan law is set that way.
 
CJ

mike_mccue
Honestly, how many times does someone transfer volume/level and pan envelopes from host to host? When I transfer my legacy of SONAR projects to the new DAW I just bring in the wave files and mix it again.

 
I used to do quite a few transfers from Sonar to Pro Tools and Cubase when collaborating...enough that I wrote an article about the process. That's when I first learned about the "gotcha" of pan laws. OMF transfers pan and level positions based on however the host has those parameters set.
 
Because Sonar can't import OMF [actually it can, see posts #17 and #18] and the classical sessions I engineered were in Pro Tools but mixed in Sonar, I used to try to re-create the settings as closely as possible.
 
FYI here's an interesting pan law thread written from the Pro Tools perspective. 

Did you really mean to say Sonar can't import OMF files Craig? That would be news to me. Page 322 of the Manual for X3 has "importing OMF projects".

John
Did you really mean to say Sonar can't import OMF files Craig? That would be news to me. Page 322 of the Manual for X3 has "importing OMF projects".

I was wrong! I looked under File > Import because to export OMF, you look under File > Export. I didn't see it there. It never occurred to me to just use the regular "open" open and look in "Files of Type."
 
Thanks, John!

i recently had to troubleshoot this topic as all the mono files I returned to a client were 3db louder than the originals when using Sonars default setting. i have decided to stick with -3db sin/cos taper from now on. 

IRRC, SONAR has been importing OMF for a decade or more.
 
Hence my comment:
 
"Honestly, how many times does someone transfer volume/level and pan envelopes from host to host? When I transfer my legacy of SONAR projects to the new DAW I just bring in the wave files and mix it again."
 
http://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR%20X2&language=3&help=Recording.36.html
 
"The OMF file does NOT supply the following data and information:
1) Volume and pan envelopes—OMF does actually support limited automation. However, as with Nuendo and most other OMF host programs, gains and pans are ignored (on both read and write) in SONAR as they are only supported on MONO tracks (OMF limitation).
2) Plug-in effects.
3) MIDI data
4) Tempo"