[ardour-dev] The new pan paradigm

[Tom Szilagyi]

> >Panning is really a pretty "artificial" concept. In the real world, a sound 
> >source exists in a stereo sound stage, and we "locate it" (the eyes do this 
> >much better than the ears) by virtue of the amplitude AND phase at each ear. 
> >Reading Phillip Newell's monitoring book really drove this home. When you 
> >turn a pan pot, your are ONLY locating the amplitude.

Yeah. And this is exactly what I want the program to do, nothing more.
I definitely don't want the DAW to auto-generate any reverberation,
sonic space simulation or anything. That's why you're there -- to
create something that gives the listener certain impressions, be those
impressions spatial or anything else. That's why mixing is an art. It
depends so much on the style, the music, or your personal feelings
about the music you are making. You just can't have the DAW do some
'generic' spatialization of any kind.

The panners are only a small part of your toolkit, and they shouldn't
do more than they are there for. You need delays, echoes, reverbs and
good ears to produce realistic spatial mixes.

Pan-potted mono mixes are bad. If you use *only* your panners, you get
pan-potted mono. This does not conclude that panners are bad. :)

> 
> the panning code rebuild was because real engineers want to position
> audio within the stereo field, and that includes a width component as
> well as a position. having a single panner for a stereo track
> (2in,2out) makes that impossible - you cannot control the width.

I'm loving it. :) It really gives you *much* more possibilities than
the old single-panner model.


Tom