Something I've never quite understood about panning

. . . or perhaps, more specifically, how DAWs etc handle panning. (Probably a couple of things, actually).

I'll use a specific-ish example, although the context isn't exclusive to the question. Say I've started off with a Reason track rewired into Sonar and, on the Reason mixer it's panned, say, hard-left (the input track in Sonar remaining centred). I then bounce that track down in Sonar, and probably get rid of Reason. If I later decided I wanted that track panned, for arguments sake, hard-right and so pan the new Sonar audio track hard-right, what is actually happening ? Would the result be 'relative' to the original panning, or does the DAW know what the score is with the bounced track and actually pan it correctly ?

I'm probably (more than likely) not explaining this very well. To put it another way, thinking more in terms of degrees, assuming 0 degrees to be hard left, 180 degrees hard-right, and 90 degrees centred : the original hard-left Reason mixer was at 0 degrees, bounced onto a track that is set at 90 degrees. Does panning this bounced track hard-right correctly move the panning to 180 degrees or, given that the pan 'setting' has only moved 90 degrees, actually move the track from 0 to 90 degrees ?

The main reason I ask this, is that I often do the bare bones of a track in Reason, standing-alone, then rewire into Sonar, probably tinker/add a bit more, and eventually bounce everything out of Reason and disregard Reason from then on, working exclusively in Sonar (I very rarely keep Sonar and Reason rewired right up to completion of the track). Ofen, a while after bouncing (particularly if I'm playing about with panning as outlined above) I'll always thing to myself 'Oh, shoot - should I have reset everything on the Reason mixer before bouncing down ?'. Even whilst Reason and Sonar are rewired, I'm not really clear on what the result is in having a track panned on the Reason mixer whilst the input track in Sonar is centred.

If anyone's still awake by this point, grateful for any advice.

Simon

You've set out a good argument for saving panning until late in the mixing process, or at least not printing it.

Figuring out what effect the panning controls will actually have, is a fairly difficult process in SONAR, especially when dealing with combinations of track pans, input pans and output pans.

This would be an interesting area for some improvement in SONAR.