Do you pan your bass?

  • Thread starter Thread starter pasnu
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Man McCartney's bass was always hard panned but damn did it sound beefy and good.

I've always centered my bass but I'm tempted to start doing some micro-panning from here on out.
 
Sometimes I pan bass and kick slightly apart, but usually I don't bother. I'm mixing a song, not a bunch of soloists, so I don't care if the kick and bass merge sonically as long as the song sounds good.

Panning bass means there is less speaker area (and cooling capacity) available for bass reproduction. Listeners will more easily hit the limits of their system with panned low frequency sources. Human hearing is not able to localize LF from speakers, though bass and kick do contain higher frequencies that can be localized by our hearing.
 
Depends on the mix and where the bass drum or bass drums will sit and how prominent it needs to be. Most often like Miroslav a touch off center, but one of the drummers i work with kicks double bass and it becomes more of a challenge to get it all working.
 
Younger than yesterday

Armistice said:
Hey Gt, you're the only person I know who uses curly brackets in general typing.... please explain?
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When I was about 12, the headmaster {principal} at my school was this guy called Mr Withers. He was quite a small guy and had a moustache like a sweeping brush ~ panned centrally. And almost everyone was utterly shit scared of him. It didn't even enter the imagination to be sent to his office. Eye contact with him was always avoided in case he called you or said something. His "Boy !" was a cry that signalled the start of your worst nightmare. And one day our maths teacher was ill and we were all happy because we thought we were in for 40 minutes of anarchy and upsetting the mouthy girls.
And he walked into our class........
Fear gripped all of us but he turned out to be fantastic. He had a great sense of humour, was really funny and he knew his maths. I never liked maths but it was the one maths lesson I recall actually ever enjoying. And he taught us how to do brackets like that ! For some reason, it was difficult to get and I struggled, but once I was able to do it, I never went back to ordinary ones. They're so boring. I do use ordinary ones sometimes and these ones [ ] rarely. It's the improvisor in me ! :cool: :D
Totally lost fear of Mr Withers after that day. It passed on to Mr DaSilva, the school caner.....

RobbieL said:
In most stereo jazz recordings I have that are from the 60's and 70's the bass is panned about 80% of the time.
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Seafroggys said:
Man, McCartney's bass was always hard panned but damn did it sound beefy and good.
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When I used to listen to stuff on my Dad's 'music centre' {this was the 70s ! :D}, I became aware for the first time of panning, though I didn't know that's what it was called. I remember hearing songs like "Blue Jay Way" and noting the bass was in a different place to the drums were in a different place to the cellos were in a different place to the vocals etc. They never sounded odd to me and they still don't ~ and the thing is, mixes are done in thousands of different ways with various instruments all over the gaff. Increasingly over the years, as I listen to something, even something simple like a folksy guitar and voice or even accapella, I can't help studying the panning. And although it seems like things have become increasingly standardized, in reality, almost anything goes. You get used to it if you like the song. And if you don't, well, how it's all mixed is largely irrelevant.

geekd said:
I often pan the bass slightly to one side, and the kick drum to the other. I mean like 11:00 and 1:00. It helps separate them, since they are often in the same frequency range.
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When I used to mix on the 8 track portastudio, the bass was always centre and because the drums occupied one track, they could go almost anywhere, from hard pan to 2 O'clock. Since going digi, I tend to put the kick slightly to the left, the snare slightly to the right with the bass still central. What's different for me is the role the drums play. Up until a couple of years ago, it was the snare that really intermeshed with the bass and so if the kick wasn't picked up that clearly, I didn't really mind. It's the other way around for me now. While the snare is crucial, I find that I want the kick anchoring and also providing some dizzy patterns occasionally.
 
Depending on the song Ill pan the bass to the right 22, and then the snare like 12 to 22 to the left. Kinda makes the song have a more live feel. If thats what you're going for!
 
What is "22" and what is "12"...???
I know what you are trying to say, but those numbers only mean something to you on your DAW. ;)

Personally, I like to use the clock positions when describing things like panning or even the positions of other knobs, since it's something everyone will understand.
Some people will use percentages...as in, "30% to the right (of center)"...but I find that's not really accurate unless every pan knob on every system has the same amount of travel from 0% to it's 100% position...and they don't.
Clocks are the same same worldwide, so when you say "panned to 2:30" or "panned to 9:00"...everyone knows what position you are refering to. :)
 
miroslav said:
What is "22" and what is "12"...???
I know what you are trying to say, but those numbers only mean something to you on your DAW. ;)

Personally, I like to use the clock positions when describing things like panning or even the positions of other knobs, since it's something everyone will understand.
Some people will use percentages...as in, "30% to the right (of center)"...but I find that's not really accurate unless every pan knob on every system has the same amount of travel from 0% to it's 100% position...and they don't.
Clocks are the same same worldwide, so when you say "panned to 2:30" or "panned to 9:00"...everyone knows what position you are refering to. :)
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Sony Vegas 6 has sliders for panning, so the clock method doesn't really work, and panning is displayed in percent. Besides, the bottom and top stops of a rotary knob's travel might vary making the clock method inconsistent from system to system. Who cares if the travel varies between 0% and 100%? If that's the unit of measurement used by the system then at least it's consistent and objective on that system. Specifying what DAW is being used seems like a good idea when talking about control settings.

Perhaps we should all do some experiments with panning to see how the actual levels are affected by our various DAW panning schemes.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Sony Vegas 6 has sliders for panning, so the clock method doesn't really work, and panning is displayed in percent.
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Yeah...sliders for panning don't work with the clock method. :)

Besides, the bottom and top stops of a rotary knob's travel might vary making the clock method inconsistent from system to system. Who cares if the travel varies between 0% and 100%?
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I'm just sayin'...if you tell me you panned to 2:00...I can get a close enough idea of what you are talking about. If you tell me 30% right, is that 30% of your DAW's knob travel or 30% of the 90 degree right side angle of the 180 degree stereo image...???


Specifying what DAW is being used seems like a good idea when talking about control settings.
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Right...at least that way someone with the same DAW might know what you are talking about...but no one else will. ;)
 
Okay. Here are some concrete reference points. In Vegas 6 with a mono track panned 30% right using 3dB pan law the left channel is 4dB lower than the right. With 0dB pan law it is 3.1dB lower. Using 6dB pan law it is 4.9dB lower. Using "Add Channels" panning it is 1.2dB lower. Using "Constant Power" it is 2.8dB lower. Using "Film" it is also 2.8dB lower.

Maybe people with other DAWs could do the same tests and we could compare and then we could know rather than guess.

Now I want to make a spreadsheet with various pan settings, pan laws and dB differentials.
 
OK...I see where you want to go with this.
Identifying each DAW's pan settings, pan laws and dB differentials certainly gives a clear mathematical view of their differences/similarities... but I don't find that useful in helping to *easily/quickly* understand where someone actually panned an instrument in the stereo image. :D
Is it 30° from center or from the 0° (hard left point)...?...you have to think about it for a bit, though I'm sure most people will divide the stereo image into two 90° halves rather than view it as a 0°-180° spread.
It's all cool...but I'm just talking about the easiest/quickest way for even the newest newb to understand what someone is saying when they talk about a pan position.

See...when I talk about using the clock positions, I don't really mean where their pan *knob* is pointing, I mean where it's heard in the *stereo image*.
Most knobs will turn down beyond the 0° and 180° points of the stereo image (not looking to get into surround stuff). Yes, we can use degrees, but some people won't immediately visualize where 30° and 120° is in the stereo image, but if you say 10:00 and 1:00, they can visualize that easily.

Don't let me stop your plans to create a spreadsheet, it's a good idea, I'm just saying that someone telling me "with a mono track panned 30% right using 3dB pan law, the left channel is 4dB lower than the right"...while perfectly accurate, it's rather too much info when trying to simply "visualize" where the damn track is sitting in the stereo image...and how loud is it really? Yeah, it's 4dB louder on the right, and we all know what 4dB means...but can you really "hear" that in your head? ;)
I think without an audio sample, just talking about loudness differences in dB from one track to another is rather useless.

I much prefer to just get a "visual" of the 0°-180° (or 9:00-3:00) stereo image and where in that spread the track is panned.

Just kicking things around...not trying to be argumentative. :)
 
I used to when I first started but then learned to leave it in the center.
 
miroslav said:
OK...I see where you want to go with this.
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What I suspect is that there will be more similarities than differences, not that there will have to be some big complex translation matrix.
 
Never had a bass guitar panned anywhere except dead center. At least not on any real attempt at the best possible mix.
 
Try it....about 11:00-11:30 or 12:30-1:00 is all you want...just a little off-center.
Hear how it opens up the middle for the lead elements without sounding at all like it's off to one side, and watch how it lowers your peak energy build-up at the center. Same with Kick and Snare.

I try never to pan two things to the exact same spot, even if I get them apart by only a few clicks...except leads, which all go up the center, but vocals and lead instruments usually take turns, so it's not an issue. I like to "fan out" all the other elements and make full use of the stereo image.

YMMV...
 
I thought you were responding to my question at IK Obi...
...and were giving some secret mathematical formula that proves bass sounds better centered. ;)

:D
 
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