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Are they lying or can you really produce quality without proper panning techniques. From my own experience, panning vastly improves your track where basically everything would sit on top of each other if you didn't.

I've been hearing guys talk about not panning their tracks. wtfmate?

Any guys out there who don't pan care to share why you prefer to do it this way?

I often only pan very slightly to open up some space. Def not like the '60's when people first discovered stereo and hard panned instruments to the right or left. Consequently, when you played the tune in mono, you only heard half the track.

It might be a bit of a hold over for me from when sound systems would often be in mono. With that said, I do usually pan drums, percussion and synths to open up some space.

A way to get around it, as in your original question is clever use of reverb to push things back in the mix while the dryer elements will be more up front.

Interesting - I couldn't imagine not panning at all. I can understand subtle panning, but for things especially like your synths, how on earth would you properly mix several sounds without panning. Surely reverb could not effectively accomplish this without forcing you to minimize your sound arsenal.

Yeah i agree with mks,its all about space in the mix.Heavily layered mixes can get very messy without panning or techniques for pushing things behind/upfront.
I have been guilty of over panning before but tend to only really slightly pan things now if i feel i need room for certain elements.
I think as long as your tracks sound good in stereo but don't lose too much when switched to mono you should be fine.I suppose it's good practice to check mixes in mono but it isn't something i have a habit of doing.

Basic Stereo separation does the trick. Not too much, but just enough. Makes everything sound a bit larger and a bit more professional.

In a Video, A masterclass I saw a guy using a sample delay on a mono source to pan it. You should try it It can give interesting results. I usually do that to place the hi hats above everything on the Y plane.

mks wrote: Def not like the '60's when people first discovered stereo and hard panned instruments to the right or left. Consequently, when you played the tune in mono, you only heard half the track.

you kinda make it sound like a choice. it was because initially the pan knob on the console was hard L or R or center. It took someone another few years before they fixed that one.

You don't HAVE to pan...

panning is for lames m8

yeah i have rarely ever panned anything. Sometimes i use auto panning as an effect...

I sometimes use panning on sweeps (mostly sounds really cheap though) and sometimes a bit of Pan-o-matic on percussion to give some movement, but that's about it.

"M8, do you even pan?"

^ awesome.

Love autopan. So lofi, like I couldn't even be bothered to put this sound in a place, and hey this kind of sounds weird. Deal with it.

I don't pan, ever. Stereo separation and width I do use but never actual panning. When I produced metal and hardcore I would always pan guitars etc but I don't think it sounds good in EDM. In rock and other 'analog' music you often have several instruments occupying the same frequencies. You cant low cut a guitar or it will sound shit, so there you have to pan it. In EDM, imo, you really shouldn't have that many instruments in the same frequency at once because you can be a lot more aggressive with the EQ without the sounds becoming unnatural because the ear isn't used to the sound of a synthesizer the same way it is to a guitar. So space in the mix shoulnd't be an issue.

When listening to music and one element is hard panned to one side for a long time, like a cymbal or guitar something, I think it's annoying as fuck to listen to unless there's something occupying the same space to the other side. If you have two guitars/synths playing the same riff but maybe different harmonies or two different layers then panning works great. Otherwise not so much imo, just sounds cheesy like wub said.

Maxxan wrote:When I produced metal and hardcore I would always pan guitars etc but I don't think it sounds good in EDM. In rock and other 'analog' music you often have several instruments occupying the same frequencies

Nice...did you engineer/produce/mix/all of the above?

wub wrote:

Maxxan wrote:When I produced metal and hardcore I would always pan guitars etc but I don't think it sounds good in EDM. In rock and other 'analog' music you often have several instruments occupying the same frequencies

Nice...did you engineer/produce/mix/all of the above?

I guess that came off a little fancier than it actually was, my musical background is as a guitar player for different garage rock/punk/metal/metalcore/whatever bands so I produced, recorded and mixed our stuff and also helped out some mates from time to time, that's how I got into the whole production gig. It was at a pretty amateurish level but I did okay I guess. Unfortunately I lost all of my recordings a while back, but the style was a bit like a more playful August Burns Red in case you're familiar with the scene.

A mixing engineer always pans to place for example parts of a drumkit in the stereo field.
Like yesterday, we close miked the hi-hat. Which means it gets is own channel, but it shouldn't be in the middle of the stereo field.

With electronic music it's totally different because most people create every sound digitally.

AxeD wrote:A mixing engineer always pans to place for example parts of a drumkit in the stereo field.
Like yesterday, we close miked the hi-hat. Which means it gets is own channel, but it shouldn't be in the middle of the stereo field.

With electronic music it's totally different because most people create every sound digitally.

Even though you create the sounds digitally you can still pan them. I sometimes pan acoustic kits if I'm going for a more acoustic vibe in a certain section of a song, toms and cymbals and whatnot. The thing is that in EDM you'll usually have more or less constant high-hats and if they're panned to one side this'll become really annoying when listening in headphones. Which is why I usually don't do it.

Mono is for tough guys. Panning is for pussies.

Maxxan wrote:

AxeD wrote:A mixing engineer always pans to place for example parts of a drumkit in the stereo field.
Like yesterday, we close miked the hi-hat. Which means it gets is own channel, but it shouldn't be in the middle of the stereo field.

With electronic music it's totally different because most people create every sound digitally.

Even though you create the sounds digitally you can still pan them. I sometimes pan acoustic kits if I'm going for a more acoustic vibe in a certain section of a song, toms and cymbals and whatnot. The thing is that in EDM you'll usually have more or less constant high-hats and if they're panned to one side this'll become really annoying when listening in headphones. Which is why I usually don't do it.

How do you feel about panning two hats, one to each side.