To Pan...or Not To Pan....

B

Brian Lloyd

Freshman
Nov 28, 2011
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hey everyone....

i hope i don't get too flamed for this one. but i wanted some feedback on peoples thoughts and practices on panning channels in live gigs. i come from the school where i was taught that if you pan the guitar left...the fat woman over on the right will complain because she cannot hear it. so pretty much mono it is.

give me some input here guys...i know this may seem like a beginners question...but i wanted to get some feedback on what people are doing these days. this is a LIVE application...not a recording.

thanks everyone!
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

It wasn't a fat woman. It was a doofus with long hair..... He seemed really confused coz the guitar was louder depending on which FOH stack he was in front of. He came to me with his trouble and then I divulged that it was the new age thing to mix in stereo........ Not a big concern though, as this guy is well known for licking windows as an occupation.......
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

It depends on if the speakers are deployed in stereo or not. By that I mean how they are aimed, not how they are wired.

If you don't have stereo coverage for at least most if not all of the seats, than panning is just screwing up the mix.

Most of the venues I have worked in have had stuff wired in stereo but didn't have stereo coverage.
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Brian Lloyd said:
hey everyone....

i hope i don't get too flamed for this one. but i wanted some feedback on peoples thoughts and practices on panning channels in live gigs. i come from the school where i was taught that if you pan the guitar left...the fat woman over on the right will complain because she cannot hear it. so pretty much mono it is.

give me some input here guys...i know this may seem like a beginners question...but i wanted to get some feedback on what people are doing these days. this is a LIVE application...not a recording.

thanks everyone!
Click to expand...

As Jay says- it all depends on how good each stack covers the audience (and don't forget that even though the left stack may have "coverage" on the right side-how far are those seats away from each array? The left level may be quite a bit down in level as compared to the right-at a particular seat(s).

It also depends on who the mix is for? THe FOH guy? The audience? The promoter? Other?. Some people don't car about anybody but themselves -so that is most important.

The question you have to ask is "What are we here to do" and for whom?

Different answers will give different "setups".
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

most of my gigs are LR line arrays....houses range from 800 seats to 3000. i guess its a toss up. i mix for the audience i guess...so i think mono is the way to go...but please feel free to chime in!
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Mono nearly all of the time unless the crowd is far enough away from the stacks to all benifit from stereo. An example is a narrow theatre with an orchestra pit in front of the stage. Another example is outside throwing long and narrow with a barracade between the folks and stage. I came from the recording studio side of the field. Very nice when I get to do it, stereo can really clean up and open a mix up but I won't do it and sacrifice the sound for the fans in the front rows and extreme sides. I use the panning occasionally to balance out stage volume like a loud guitar amp on stage left etc.
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Ivan Beaver said:
As Jay says- it all depends on how good each stack covers the audience (and don't forget that even though the left stack may have "coverage" on the right side-how far are those seats away from each array? The left level may be quite a bit down in level as compared to the right-at a particular seat(s).

It also depends on who the mix is for? THe FOH guy? The audience? The promoter? Other?. Some people don't car about anybody but themselves -so that is most important.

The question you have to ask is "What are we here to do" and for whom?

Different answers will give different "setups".
Click to expand...
And not just level either, but also relative timing and phase. Somebody sitting in front of the left stack likely hears the left channel louder and earlier relative to the right channel than someone seated in the center or off to the right.

When you start to think about it, there is also often a limited range of distance from the speakers where the separation of the speakers is going to provide the desired stereo effect. For someone close to the speakers compared to the separation between the speakers any panning might make a huge difference, maybe more than you want, while at a much greater distance away that same pan would probably have a much more limited effect.
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Brad Weber said:
And not just level either, but also relative timing and phase. Somebody sitting in front of the left stack likely hears the left channel louder and earlier relative to the right channel than someone seated in the center or off to the right.

When you start to think about it, there is also often a limited range of distance from the speakers where the separation of the speakers is going to provide the desired stereo effect. For someone close to the speakers compared to the separation between the speakers any panning might make a huge difference, maybe more than you want, while at a much greater distance away that same pan would probably have a much more limited effect.
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And that time difference is a problem when using cross matrixed systems. In those you HAVE to pan pretty hard or the people on the sides are really screwed up (time wise). They start to hear 2 of sharp attack instruments and such.

Again-it is all a compromise.
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

My goal is to have every seat in the house hear the exact same show. So, panning something hard left or hard right is out of the question for me. But, I do a little trick called delay panning. My mix is "stereo," but mono at the same time. This really only works on digital desks, so if you're analog, you're SOL. :)

I've got 3 guitars to deal with in my mix. So, I'll take my lead guitar, assign it to 2 channels, and pan them 30% each way. Then I'll delay the left channel by say .3 or so ms. Just enough to widen it up a little in the mix, and make more room for vocals. It creates the illusion of panning, without actually being louder on one side than the other. My 2nd guitar will get panned 60% each way, and then I'll delay the right channel the same. 3rd guitar just stays on 1 mono channel panned center. This really makes room for the guitars in the mix to "sit" comfortably, and then let other stuff really pop in my mix, without over EQ'ing or pushing the levels too much. It sounds really cool down the middle of the room, and sounds balanced for the rest of the crowd.



Evan
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Evan Kirkendall said:
My goal is to have every seat in the house hear the exact same show. So, panning something hard left or hard right is out of the question for me. But, I do a little trick called delay panning. My mix is "stereo," but mono at the same time. This really only works on digital desks, so if you're analog, you're SOL. :)

I've got 3 guitars to deal with in my mix. So, I'll take my lead guitar, assign it to 2 channels, and pan them 30% each way. Then I'll delay the left channel by say .3 or so ms. Just enough to widen it up a little in the mix, and make more room for vocals. It creates the illusion of panning, without actually being louder on one side than the other. My 2nd guitar will get panned 60% each way, and then I'll delay the right channel the same. 3rd guitar just stays on 1 mono channel panned center. This really makes room for the guitars in the mix to "sit" comfortably, and then let other stuff really pop in my mix, without over EQ'ing or pushing the levels too much. It sounds really cool down the middle of the room, and sounds balanced for the rest of the crowd.



Evan
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+1 One of my favorite "tricks"
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Since we are now in JV I'll give one up for the analog guys with a good multi effects unit. Also obviously works with digital and plugs. For the monster guitar sound: Guitar panned center dry. Pitch tune up 1.01 pan hard left. Pitch tune down .99 pan hard right. Add any reverb or chorus to the detuned channels. This also works well with a stereo chorus or a pair of modulated delay lines in the 10-15 ms range. Excellent for background vocals as well. As Evan says cool in the center and balanced everywhere else.
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Evan....

I think I'm doing something along those lines with my analog setup using a couple of M2000's. "Dry" channel of the guitar gets panned one way, other channel of the same guitar goes to one channel of the M2000 and I use the pre-delay of the reverb unit as my delay, bringing it back in on another channel and panning it the other way. So if I'm correct, I'm coming close to doing it without a digital desk.

Think "electronically enhanced to simulate stereo" like it used to say in the '60's when originally mono LP's were re-released in faux stereo.

DR
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Brian Lloyd said:
hey everyone....

i come from the school where i was taught that if you pan the guitar left...the fat woman over on the right will complain because she cannot hear it. so pretty much mono it is.
Click to expand...
I do more panning of guitars for the opposite reason, the guitar amp is often already too loud on the side it is on, and only needs reinforcement on the opposite side to be balanced.
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

I pan pretty much everything subtly to their stage positions, nothing farther than 50% in either direction. Really helps with localization and clears up room for lead vocal down the middle (I often pan BGVs a little too). I always walk the room during soundcheck to make sure nothing's getting lost, and sometimes have to tighten up the stereo field or sacrifice panning altogether when the PA du jour/room situation warrants. But generally in the size room Brian's talking about I don't have many problems.

Dave Rat's article "Mixing Beyond Stereo" has some interesting ideas but the one that rocked my world was bass panning. With aux-fed subs, pan the DI over a little bit to where the bassist is standing and the mic (421 for me) a little harder to the other side. Makes it seem like the attack of the notes is coming directly from the player, but the other side still gets plenty of boom and definition from the mic and the subs ensure that the low end coverage is still even. I highly recommend trying it out! The EQ and compression is obviously quite different from what you would do to mono bass, but it makes the bass sound wide without losing clarity or oomph.
 
Re: To Pan...or Not To Pan....

Evan Kirkendall said:
My goal is to have every seat in the house hear the exact same show. So, panning something hard left or hard right is out of the question for me. But, I do a little trick called delay panning. My mix is "stereo," but mono at the same time. This really only works on digital desks, so if you're analog, you're SOL. :)

I've got 3 guitars to deal with in my mix. So, I'll take my lead guitar, assign it to 2 channels, and pan them 30% each way. Then I'll delay the left channel by say .3 or so ms. Just enough to widen it up a little in the mix, and make more room for vocals. It creates the illusion of panning, without actually being louder on one side than the other. My 2nd guitar will get panned 60% each way, and then I'll delay the right channel the same. 3rd guitar just stays on 1 mono channel panned center. This really makes room for the guitars in the mix to "sit" comfortably, and then let other stuff really pop in my mix, without over EQ'ing or pushing the levels too much. It sounds really cool down the middle of the room, and sounds balanced for the rest of the crowd.



Evan
Click to expand...

+1

For the people wanting to do more research: this is called the Haas effect or Haas panning. I don't have a number as a rule, depends on where you want the comb filtering to lie for the few lucky people in the center, but its a neat trick. I really enjoy doing it fairly aggressively with reverbs and delays to get the "wider than the pa" sound.

I go as much as 6-8 ms of delay.
 
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Brad Weber nailed it. Love stereo but there is few ft wide section down the middle that gets it. The rest are hosed. I try to reduce overlap between left and right pa too reduce combing off the centerline too.
 
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