Hello,
 
Can anyone help me with my panning dillema?  I'm composing an electronic tune and I want to set pan values to the individual notes in the Piano Roll View.  You can set the velocity when double clicking on a note, but no pan options.  I'm running Sonar x1d and using strictly stock soft synths.  I'm currently using PSYN 2.  I've also tried setting the pan values using the MIDI controllers, but when you click to add a new controller, you have the option of NRPN, RPN's and just different channel numbers.  What would you select if you wanted to control the pan on the soft synth, or don't some soft synths allow this kind of control.  Also, I don't know if this is a glitch with Sonar x1 or not, but I've noticed that there are no handles to adjust the velocity controller in the MIDI controller pane.  You can use the drawing tool to redraw velocity values, but I would think there should be handles to adjust each not more easily.  Just an aside, if anyone else has noticed this. 
 
I forgot to mention, that I have controlled the pan using automation and drawing a pan line on the track.  This process is a bit tedious for what I want.  I want tighter controll over each note and an easy way of doing that.  Maybe it's not possible with the soft synths or how I'm going about it.
 
Thanks for any help!

Hi jramler,

are you coming from trackers?  per note panning..  i haven't seen it in standard daws...  if you are coming from trackers you can try rewire, or revisit which is a tracker vst...   http://revisit.info/



I don't think the velocity curves are bug..  I'm not 100% happy with the design...  


if you are about to go rewire, and want to load the dx plugin into your slave...  maybe a solution here http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview.php?t=177538&start=0

pan envelope on the audio track. not too difficult if you set snap values correctly and take advantage of highlighting sections from the bottom portion of the track and dragging up and down from the top portion (using the smart tool). There is a Cake video all about envelopes.

MIDI data doesn't contain pan information. Automating the pan envelope generally won't work either because the tails of some notes will be panned too. So as far as I am aware, you can NOT do what you want, exactly. But:

Your best option is to make multiple MIDI tracks. If you're only going to be using say three pans, maybe a left, middle and right pan to create an interesting feel, clone your finished midi instrument track to make three copies. Pan each one where required. Then delete the appropriate notes from each MIDI clip to create the desired effect (or create each MIDI track from scratch. This will give you maximum flexibility in your end result. You can then tweak each synth parameter slightly for more variation and interest, if you wish.

MIDI notes do have handles. They can just be a little tricky somtimes to get. Top right hand corner of the MIDI note I think and it turns to the velocity handle.

Use two keyboards, pan one to the left, one to the right on the destination tracks. Or, select all the notes you want to pan left, copy them and paste them in a new track or Layer panned left. Delete them from the original track. Or, work that pan knob real fast!<  --just kidding. Setting it up to that automatically is just as intensive as editing it afterward.

The OP may wish to try CC 8 "Balance" or CC 10 "Pan".

Or, work that pan knob real fast!<  --just kidding

Now that takes me back a number of years, when it was the only option.

Great days.

The midi event cc10 would pan the synth left or right, that's your choice, just like using audio envelopes.

It can do it pretty quick if you wanted to embed the events between the notes and having them jump back and forth but you can also do that with envelopes because they're fast too.

If you look at a program like ez or addictive drums, the set is panned each instrument (which is pitches) so they're not all in the same place.

That's done with the synths audio engine though, I don't think those provisions are in a normal synth.

Thanks for all the input guys!  Thanks for the tip on using automation envelopes, perfectprint.  That little trick of highlighting sections and dragging in the upper part of the track is pretty slick.  I missed that tutorial.  Thanks also, mattplaysguitar.  You're right about the automation envelope being a problem with individual MIDI notes.  The overlapping tails of each note would get panned into the next note.  I never thought of that.  I like the idea of creating separate tracks.  That maybe the best option.  I have tried using CC 10 in the MIDI controller pane to control the soft synths pan, but it didn't seem to work.  It may work for an actual hardware synth, but I'm not sure that the soft synths, or the one I'm currently using, recognizes this controller.
 
Thanks again for all your input!
 
 

I can’t say about your softsynth but I will say I can use CC10 on all of the softsynths that I have, and I have many!