Panning the same mono tracks Left and Right

Porter

Porter

aka WookieMan
I'm having a discussion with a guy here at work.

Last night I was transferring one of my old songs from my Roland 840EX to SONAR. When I first recorded this tune I was playing a Strings patch on my Keyboard that only had a single Mono out. When I was playing this back on the Roland I had it panned straight down the centre.

Last night after I had transferred my song into SONAR I wanted the strings to sound wider and have more body. What I did was clone my mono strings track and pan one copy of it full left and the other copy of it fully right.

There are other tracks which I've got panned down the centre (vocals & guitar).

The guy at work reckons that I could have got the same effect by turning up the volume on the strings. I tend to disagree.

My assumption:
If you play a mono track panned centre at a volume of 100%, 50% will come out of your right speaker and 50% of the signal will come from the left.

Now, If I duplicate the track and pan one hard left and the other hard right, then 100% of one of the tracks will come out of the left speaker and 100% of the other track will come out of the left speaker.

This will give a wider 'stereo' sound.

His assumption:

By doing this, I'm not really creating a stereo 'sound', the reason for the wider 'stereo' effect could be explained by the two tracks playing slightly out of sync.

Could you please shead some light on this for us.

Thanks,

Porter
 
By copying the exact track and panning them hard left and hard right all you do is increase the volume. What will have is phase cancelation problems. One of the tracks need to be a bit different like adding some delay to one side. That would fatten up the sound and give it the stereo sound.. Hope this helps..
 
scottboyher said:
By copying the exact track and panning them hard left and hard right all you do is increase the volume. What will have is phase cancelation problems.
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Phase cancelation? Using the exact same track? Huh?


One of the tracks need to be a bit different like adding some delay to one side. That would fatten up the sound and give it the stereo sound..
Click to expand...

Actually, that probably would cause some phasing problems.
 
chessrock said:
Is this a serious question? ? ?
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Yes it is. I tried doing this last night and it appeared to give me a wider stereo sound. I just wanted to know if this was the case or weather my ears were fooling me.

Porter
 
Try this:

1) Take a mono track, center-panned, and play it.

2) Use the balance control of your playback system and listen to what is coming out of each speaker, individually.

Kind of sounds like the exact same thing (out of each speaker), right?

3) Now try the same thing with the two copies panned hard right / left like you were talking about.

Again, you're hearing the exact same thing out of each speaker. We call that mono.

What makes something stereo is having something different coming out of each speaker, even if it's as simple as having the exact same thing, but at different levels, otherwise known as panning.
 
If I have two same tracks playing down the centre and gradually move them left and right respectively the sound sounds wider, or is it just louder?

Porter
 
It shouldn't sound like anything, unless your mixer has some sort of compensation going on. Look, all you're doing is distributing the same sound to either speaker in varying proportions -- which is the same thing as panning one mono track.

Unless they are delayed slightly, which I'm guessing is the case.
 
mixsit said:
Unless maybe the clone insn't exactly aligned?
Wayne
Click to expand...

LOL

If it's not lined,, then it is out of phase and will prolly sound quieter. ( Think about 2 turn tables playing the same some while the DJ is spinning,, but one is just a lil faster than the other,,, eventually they will start sounding weird,,, Thats out of phase ) I did this with my first project. 99.8 % was mono and I sent it off to get mastered. Eventhough I ran it through the mixer using 2 channels hard left and right,,, It was still mono. spent $1,500 for the master at a very poplular mastering house. All the damn ME had to say to me was,,, hey,, your mix sucks,, go back and redo it then I will master it for you. Thats all he had to say.

He prolly just ran a batch on it or something.

I sent him sh@t and Got Sh@t back

4 ONE = Learning Experience

LOL

Malcolm
 
Porter said:
I tried doing this last night and it appeared to give me a wider stereo sound. I just wanted to know if this was the case or weather my ears were fooling me.
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Your ears are fooling you, or else you have some really bad gear!

2 mono tracks panned apart gives no different image than a single mono track panned center --- it's mono and it will stay mono.
 
Blue Bear,

I'm glad to report that my ears were definately fooling myself. When I recorded the track last night, cloned it, then hard panned it did sounded to me as if it had a wider stereo field....mind you, I panned both tracks whislt they were playing. I didn't think about increasing the volume of the track to see the effect.

Thank's for pointing me into the right direction guys. You know the old expression to learn from your mistakes... well that sort of applies I guess.. I've learnt from my experiements.

Thanks for your quick responses guys.

Porter
 
You will get a broader sound if you pan one channel to the left then very slightly detune the other channel and pan it to the right. This will make it sound like there is more than one instrument or one very big instrument and gives it a nice stereo sound. Great for making strings sound big, full and real. Add several differently detuned tracks to the mix at different pan positions and you can get a huge sound (but going too far with the detuning can make it seem sloppy). You can also add a very slight delay to the channels so that no channel starts at exactly the same time as another (I’m talking 5 – 20 ms.)

If the recording is in midi format, then try using 2 different but very similar patches paned to the left and right. Or use the same patch, but change the parameters of the sound slightly for each channel. You can combine this with the above detuning trick…

Or you can get an effect box and add some stereo chorus.
Also a good stereo reverb will help break the mono feel and may be a better choice for single point sounds like a solo violin or trumpet. If your keyboard does not have a built in effects / reverb, then adding some verb will really help the sound come to life, since bare synth sounds are perfectly dry.

I always keep all my synths very slightly detuned from each other, helps lessen some of the one dimensional-ness in the sound that you tend to get when you have a lot of keyboard tracks in a recording.

But yeah, mono = same audio info to each channel. So putting the same audio info to each channel like you were doing = mono. Trick is to make the 2 channels somehow different.
 
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