ston
Panning is not particularly critical for the effect; it has a small bearing on the perception of the direction of the fused sound, but the delay is the important factor.
If both the original and delayed signals are mono and dead center, there is no illusion of width at all. All I hear is the change of tone from the comb filtering. I mean you might perceive some kind of depth from the fact that there's a "reflection" after the initial signal, but you can achieve a small illusion of depth from a mono delay with delay times well over the 40-50ms limit of the Haas effect.
His main point is that no panning is needed to apply the Haas effect a stereo signal - all you need to do is delay one channel. But my argument was that a stereo signal, in terms of what comes out of the speakers (which, after all, is what matters here), is effectively two mono signals panned hard left and right. The left channel goes to the left speaker, the right channel goes to the right speaker. So if you have a stereo signal that's identical on left and right and then you delay one of the channels, you start with a mono sound which then becomes stereo. But this stereo width is only achievable if each signal comes from a different point. And when you have two speakers, that's exactly what you have. You cannot achieve stereo width with one speaker no matter how you slice it. And then he proceeded to write about 20 comments detailing how I probably live in my mom's basement and use a pirated copy of Fruity Loops. Oh and he's a pro who "learned his sh*t" on an expensive audio production course so I should just STFU. So you can imagine what kind of person I'm dealing with.