| Level wrote on Fri, 18 March 2005 07:14 |
I have a little dirty trick I use on digital hard pans. If I am going to place something far field right or left, I will make an identical track and pan it (lets say the hard pan is left) to the other side (right) at 3 o'clock and run the gain down about 20dB under the hard panned sound with this new track. This gives the sound a larger picture..but you are still retaining the clarity of the hard pan.
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Oh come on, Bill. This is just another name for panning inward a tiny percentage. There is absolutely NOTHING different about what you are doing.
A rose is a rose is a rose, an in phase sum on the opposite channel is IDENTICAL with using a pan pot. Remember, a pan pot is functionally equivalent to a Y cord attached to two faders, one panned totally left and one panned totally right, and manipulating the gain between them! That's ALL IT IS.
You are not "simulating" old analog gear by reducing the stereo separation in your digital mixes. In fact, you are making things worse. It's not the inphase "monophonically power panned" "crosstalk" that was advantageous about all our old analog mixing gear. It was the out of phase leakage and distortion that gave increased apparent stereo separation. Think, PSYCHOACOUSTICS.
Think the basic principles of stereo imaging. The phantom image in the center is just that, a phantom, and someone sitting off center will find it ambiguous because that image is not placed directly in a transducer. By power panning a left signal off of the left slightly you are making it more AMBIGUOUS, not less. Especially in a system that has no out of phase leakage or distortion, like a digital mixing system. This is why mixing engineers have to learn to think out of the box, understand that since digital mixing systems are perfect, they are going to have to learn more about psychoacoustics than they ever had in the past when their analog consoles helped them along.
The Fact is that an inwardly panned signal makes it appear MORE AMBIGUOUS in the stereo image and REDUCES the sweet spot. It does not help anyone but a listener located exactly in the center. All other listeners will perceive an even more vague and unidentified positional location.
The problem (if it is a problem) with the perfection of a digital mixer with no crosstalk CANNOT BE SOLVED and SHOULD NOT BE SOLVED BY inwardly panning, or attempting to do this with some non-magic like Bill describes.
When more mixing engineers learn to be more sophisticated than using simple power panning, all this nonsense about the "magic" of analog consoles and analog mixing will go into the past. Start learning about WHY stereo microphone pairs sound more realistic than a single microphone panned off center. Start learning how to take advantage of delays, in phase and out of phase signals, Haas effects, and early reflections.
To get you started, I refer you to this paper by Thomas Lund, of TC Electronic:
http://www.tcelectronic.com/TechLibrary and click on "Enhanced Localization in 5.1 production."
Learn how to take advantage of psychoacoustics. Think smarter. Try to investigate WHY some of the the things you have tried over the years have worked and others have not.
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It will sound different than any setting you can find with a single channel pan. Use gain on the ghost track for flavor.
Just something simple to try folks.
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This is pure B.S. If it works at all in any distinguishable way from simply moving your pan pot, it will be because you're using an analog mixer with some out of phase high frequency leakage or crosstalk, or, more likely you're simply fooling yourself by unmatched gains, etc. Power panning is the pits. And "adding the same signal to the other channel 30 dB down" is the same as power panning.
