Mixing question

Panning question

I have given this question some thought, but have further confused myself. Perhaps one of you pros can help me out.

The question is about panning. If I record a guitar in stereo (left and right outputs from my POD to 2 seperate channels on my mixer) do I need to pan the seperate channels on the hardware mixer hard right and hard left while I’m recording?

Here’s another panning question. Say I am playing back a multiple track song in Ntrack, but playing it back through 2 channels on my (hardware) mixer. It seems if I don’t pan my mixer channels hard right and hard left, changes I make to the individual tracks in Ntrack (panning) have no effect. So then I start wondering, if I am really listening to the music “after the soundcard” then how can I really effect panning on individual tracks and then mix down the song so the instruments stay panned?

See, now I bet I have confused you too : )

Can someone please help…

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…to 2 seperate channels on my mixer) do I need to pan the seperate channels on the hardware mixer hard right and hard left while I’m recording?

That all depends on how you are recording them. If you are recording the direct out of the individual mixer channels (or directly out of the POD into the soundcard) to separate mono tracks in n-Tracks then no, but if you are recording the master mix or a submix out of the mixer then yes.

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Here’s another panning question. Say I am playing back a multiple track song in Ntrack, but playing it back through 2 channels on my (hardware) mixer. It seems if I don’t pan my mixer channels hard right and hard left, changes I make to the individual tracks in Ntrack (panning) have no effect.

Yes, you will need to pan the channels on the mixer hard left and right in that case. To see what’s happening listen to just one mono track in n-Tracks and with just one channel’s fader up in your mixer…play with the pans. Then turn up the other mixer channel and pan each of the two channels hard away from each other, and pan the single mon track again. In the first case you will hear only the mixer pan cause the position to change, but the volume of the mono track will go up and down when you pan it in n-Tracks. Second case will cause the mono track to be panned with the n-Tracks pan control. With both mixer pans in the center you will be monitoring in mono.