Independent Stereo Panning
Hello,
I’d like to make a feature request to have Independent Stereo Panning for a single stereo track. As it stands right now the only way to pan a single stereo track is to clone it then pan left and right. To be able to, for example, have two rotary knobs in place of the normal horizontal slider (with the same functionality ie: hover info, click to change values), would allow me to pan left and right a single stereo track, instead of having to clone it and do the same. Mono tracks would remain as is. This would significantly reduce the number of tracks and resources require to accomplish the task. As an example, with just one of my songs I could reduce the number of tracks from 33 to 23.
All thoughts are welcome.
PACO
So, you are talking about taking a stereo track ( left and right ) Select just the right track and pan that without changing the left track panning?
This might be an interesting feature. I usually record as stereo/two track for just that reason, there would be some definite benefit when it come to space on the mixer board.
Sound Forge (really just a two track mastering program) lets you select either side of a displayed wave display so that effects are applied to only one side of the stereo file and highlight what section you want to apply an effect to, not just panning. But I can only do that if I don’t care how the changes sit in the mix, otherwise I do it in n_Track where I can judge what the change did to the mix.
With N-track we can only select the entire stereo wave file. Perhaps it would be better to apply your idea by having the left and right sides of a stereo file selectable? Then any effect could be applied without cloning the file. I would much prefer doing this in N-Track over working the file in another program where I cannot hear the affect changes make to the mix. It would be a great feature!
We don’t get many comment on suggested changes in the forum. Any one have comments?
Thanks Bax,
I totally agree. This feature, being able to pan (2 knobs) the stereo track is common with other daw software. I should mention that this feature would be nice to have included in n-Track and when a stereo track is created it should default to a 2 button pan option instead of the single horizontal slider. However, yes each side of the stereo track should be selective so more should be pondered.
I suggest, perhaps a duel track slider using the existing single track mixer layout may be more productive, in effect, a 2 track mixer but only for one track, that being a stereo track. Give the stereo mixer created a default background color like the Aux channels, in a single box, for easy identification for example and then each side could have EQ, volume, comp, ect… that the single mono track mixers have.
Perhaps Flavio could come up with a more elegant solution and include all the functionality we’ve discussed. The bottom line for me is less tracks. I have one song with 43 tracks, so I could definitely make use of this feature in a big way.
PACO
I hope Flavio will consider the suggestion carefully.
I’ve run into the same situation where I had way more tracks then I could keep up with.
Here’s a little tutorial for folks who may not have dealt with a lot of tracks:
Fortunately, we have Groups, and I was able to do a “sub-max” of each group and then adjust the volume/pan for the whole in the Group; for instance, if I wanted to make several background singers sound like a chorus, I had to pan each singer to a separate pan setting, adjust EQ, reverb, etc. on separate tracks then I used the groups to fit the “chorus” into the mix. That way I didn’t have to try and adjust the volume and pan for each track in a Group.
Once I got the tracks in each Group to sound the way I wanted I could adjust the balance in the mix without having to “Tweek” the member tracks over and over.
Bax
if they are going to go through all that they might as well add other features like a
center speaker on/off tab, choice of sine law and/or sine cosine law, and interaural time delay (for headphone mixing) with adjustable spacing (eg. 21~15cm) and choice of laws used for different frequencies.
for example, interaural time delay follows sine law completely at 300Hz, while the sine-cosine law predicts ITD well at 600Hz, go above 600Hz and the image moves rapidly toward the left speaker due to the sound diffracting around the head interfering destructively with the direct sound when total time delay nears the half-wavelength.
but I digress…
dontcare
Done care, I was kind of hoping you would chime in with your support of Pacos suggestion!
if they are going to go through all that they might as well add other features like a
center speaker on/off tab, choice of sine law and/or sine cosine law, and interaural time delay (for headphone mixing) with adjustable spacing (eg. 21~15cm) and choice of laws used for different frequencies.
for example, interaural time delay follows sine law completely at 300Hz, while the sine-cosine law predicts ITD well at 600Hz, go above 600Hz and the image moves rapidly toward the left speaker due to the sound diffracting around the head interfering destructively with the direct sound when total time delay nears the half-wavelength.
but I digress....
dontcare
I think dontcare's suggestion has some merit to it. Since I don't have have a 4.1 Studio monitor set up, the center speaker cut off would not be useful to me. It would nice to have a center speaker with my studio setup and I certainly would agree the features dontcare is suggestion would be a great thing to have.
I do record initially with headphones, Audio-Technica M50's, and my mixes at first do not match very well once played back on my JBL studio monitors/Sub. Would a time delay for the headphones really help? I'd have to try it and see. Once I get the the mixes going on the studio monitors, 2.1 setup and even after I think I got it right I do check the mix down on a good Logitech z5500 5.1 system and I do struggle with getting the center sound to be in good balance so there's a good deal of running back and forth between the studio monitors and my 5.1 system and as a result without a center speaker on my studio monitors this is a problem. Something I will address for next years album.
Thanks Don'tcare for your suggestions, although off the beaten path for the feature request I'm asking is nevertheless, a welcome idea.
PACO
your welcome,
yes it makes a big difference when mixing in headphones as each persons head is a different size and it takes different amounts of time to reach the middle ear.
with a simple panning half way between center and left you get interference that at some frequencies will be productive and add a high amplitude at the right ear, while at other frequencies it will be destructive and the amplitude at the right ear will could disappear altogether.
this would be the time to revamp the panning structure to compensate for other known problems specific to frequency response of the human ears ITD and ITT (interaural intensity difference), while they are building the dual panning GUI, along with assigning options for different panning laws users could apply to different frequencies for better accuracy.
dontcare
Hi all,
thanks for the suggestions and comments. Version 7.0.3 will allow to pan left and right stereo channels separately, and we’ll generally work on making panning more flexible in v7.0.3.
Flavio.