Is my car stereo making my panning sound wrong?

A

andybhoy

New member
Listening to a few of my tunes in my car the panning on each track sounds really extreme.

My tunes are kinds of ... Indie / rock. I usually leave bass, drums and main vocals centred. Clean, acoustic and distorted guitars are panned left and right.

Using cubase 6 I usually pan 0-15 (is this percent? The dial just us L10 for example...)

So... Sat in my drivers seat (rhd) with say a guitar solo panned to the left (about L10) it sounds really faint. But in the passenger side (left) it sounds ok. But perhaps the rythem guitar sounds a bit low...

Sitting at my monitors or listening on a stereo, it sounds good. Although if anything, I think they could be separated even more to sit better.

A i using too much panning? is it just a car stereo? Or is my ageing ears? Or is it simply using budget hardware/software to record/mix etc.?
 
Best thing to do is to reference some commercial tracks at your monitors, then out in the car.

Could be just the natural difference, or you could have balance set up off centre in the car, or you could have a speaker unplugged/dead.

Best way to know for sure is to check other music out.

Hope that helps.
 
I'd do much more panning than what you are doing now. I think you'd be surprised at how widely spread many commercial mixes are today. If you have your guitars double-tracked, try going hard left and hard right with them. Test out the extremes of panning and decide what is right for you.

Also, you said you leave your drums in the center: Do you record with two overhead mics? If so, try panning those hard left/right. Also, give some sense of space to your toms (if you used tom mics) by panning them as you would hear them on the drum set.
 
Cheers,
I do usually reference against other tracks, but mostly for levels and tone etc. But aye, I will try to listen to panning as much as I can.

I actually use an e drum kit (neighbour friendly), its a middle of the range with nice sounds but also midi out which I put through Superior Drummer.

Youve actually just blown my mind, guitarplayr.. I have up till now been panning from center a little bit. But your suggestion has effectively doubled the stereo width. I need to investigate further. Thx for that.
 
Yes, those numbers (L10, R10) are percentage; 0% is center, 100% is hard Left or Right. So, your 15% is still pretty much in the center sa it doesn't really move much across the stereo spectrum. Like GP says, move your tracks out and utilize your stereo field.

Listening to tracks in the car is always a good idea. We're always in our car and usually listening to tunes so it's a familiar environment to our ears. But, I wouldn't recommend making critical decisions like which tracks to pan and where based upon my car. You should be doing that at your mixing station with your monitors. Use the car for broader listening like tonal balance, vox clarity,comparing to commercial mixes, etc.
 
My dog ate the right ear of my earbuds, so now I jog with just the left ear in. There are entire parts missing in tons of songs, meaning there is a lot of 100% panning going on nowdays.

There are no real rules for panning, but most OH are 100% L and R, toms 40-60% spread across, HH sometimes 30-40%, Snare and Kick centered. For guitars it all depends on the song...I don't usually pan 100% either way, but sometimes it's right. Lead vocals centered. Bass centered, or 5% one way to give it a little more space. Other instruments pan to give them their own space, or fill in spaces in a mix. But, again, there are no rules.

I don't like a huge stereo spread in the drums (or anything for that matter), but you can go really wide without getting a huge effect out of it.
 
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