Pan Control Rant

[Rick Cornish]

I might be getting off on a rant here. (You've been warned.)

A bitch with DP, but, also with every DAW I'm familiar with.

Go back in time when the recording world was mono. And the pan was good. You twist left, it moves left. You twist right, it goes right. And all was as it should be.

Fast forward to today. It's a rare track in my projects that's mono. Every VI I own outputs in stereo. And in those stereo tracks (95% of the tracks in most of my projects), we still have the lowly pan control… which—in a stereo track—actually provides just about zero control over placement in the sound field panorama. A single "pan" control in a stereo track is really just a *balance* control (and not a very good one). "Pan" right—you just get less of the left. "Pan" left—less of the right signal. Nothing really moves in the sound field. And that—IMHO—sucks.

To achieve control over the panorama of a stereo signal requires TWO pan controls—one each for the left and right channel. It's the only way to control image placement in the soundfield: both panorama (the location left-to-right) and width (the amount of spread, from a narrow, monaural signal to full stereo).

Thus, it seems to me, that every DAW should come with dual pan controls on every stereo channel by default. But none do.

And—now that we're seeing Apple Spatial Audio a/k/a Dolby Atmos applied to stereo music mixes—the need for better control and precision in soundfield placement is greater than ever.

MOTU has given us the Trim plugin, which does enable true stereo panorama control, as does the freeware Flux Stereo Tool 3 (https://www.flux.audio/project/stereo-tool-v3/), which offers phase metering along with individual level, pan, and polarity controls for the left and right channels.Perhaps there are others (if you know of any, please share). Both work, but wouldn't it be so much better to control panorama from the mixing console… without having to keep a bunch of plugin windows open to have a visual on what you have going?

So, I can solve the stereo panning dilemma with a plugin, but it seems like a gross oversight that it's not built-in to every professional DAW out there.

Or—to quote Dennis Miller—"of course, that's just my opinion… I could be wrong."

[Rick Cornish]

I just discovered that with v10.3, Logic addressed this issue. Time for DP to catch up.
https://whylogicprorules.com/true-stereo-panning/

[stubbsonic]

You're absolutely right about the need for this to be addressed! I recall in some other thread we were talking about how Trim should just be available in the mixer.

At a glance, I'm not crazy about how Logic Pro addressed this- as it looks like you have to flip between three views/pan-modes.

A pan/level/invert for each audio channel makes more sense. It is redundant with other ways of doing it (like making stereo into dual mono), but it would be an easy way to position the stereo-- and then use the track fader basically as a group fader (for the whole shape). It might also be useful to implement some kind of mid-side mode in that same sub-panel.

[FMiguelez]

I hear you, Rick, and I totally agree with you.

I've suggested to have the Trim plugin right in the mixer, below the pan pots, since at least DP4.... but MOTU doesn't seem to listen to our suggestions.
It could be a preference to show/hide it, like we can do with MWEq and MW compressor. We could see the stereo setting right there in the mixer, without touching or opening anything.

It would look similar to VE Pro's mixer, which is amazing.

It is SO ANNOYING having to open a Trim plugin for each track... double click set it, close it, every time. It really seems like an oversight from MOTU, especially in 2021.

[FMiguelez]

Oh, and while they're at it, they should also FIX the 2 damned Trim bugs I've described ad nauseam in this very forum. They have been there for yeeeeeeeeeears...

(the broken Link parameter for position and the way it sums to mono, which is incorrect)

[Rick Cornish]

At a glance, I'm not crazy about how Logic Pro addressed this- as it looks like you have to flip between three views/pan-modes.

While I’m sure the approach Logic’s developers took could be improved upon, what I like about it is the simple graphic representation of the panorama setting for each track. This would be very useful when looking across the mixer in the middle of a mix while sussing-out balance issues.

Also, the Pan & Width (or “Spread”) controls are a viable way to define and control stereo panorama. I’d be happy with something like that.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Rick Cornish]

I've suggested to have the Trim plugin right in the mixer, below the pan pots, since at least DP4....
We could see the stereo setting right there in the mixer, without touching or opening anything.

I like this idea. It seems like all these functions should be available in the channel strip. And MOTU has a precedent for making mixer features user-selectable, so (like sends or the EQ graph) they could be turned on when needed and turned off if you don’t.

[rlcartwright]

And in a semi-related question, why is that when I pan a stereo track the left/right level meters to the right of the fader don't show the effect of the panning, even though I can hear it and see it on the master fader meters. Are the track level meters somehow before the pan? This seems odd, although I could be missing something very obvious. I've looked for a related preference, etc., and have not found it. Plug-ins that have any left/right control do show the effect of panning in the DP track meters.