
Personally I *never* reference pan knob position when I talk about pan amount...
... Frankly I never even thought of it as any other way. But apparently others might, I guess; which - just like when talking about decibels - makes it important to specify the unit of measurement one is using.
The same weakness happens with the clock position, too. In fact, if you really wanted to split hairs even further, the clock position is really applicable to headphones instead of monitors, since the headphone "space" treats mono as 12:00 high, at the top of the head.Noting and agreeing that most of our discussion here is about splitting hairs and this is just for fun...
...on the way home I thought of another twist to add to it.
The part about a 180° sound stage…only translates to headphones or when standing directly in-between speakers. When we use monitors...we are actually sitting within a 60° degree range --Left to Right-- of the equilateral triangle mix position.
So while panning 180° IS hard right...it doesn't quite sound 180° through monitors from the mix position.
the absolutely worst thing about using clock numbers, though, which is a major pain in the ass imho, is that all mixes i have worked on this past season will automatically shift an hour to the right at about 2am this sunday, and stay that way until november.now i know why pipeline set up his studio in arizona.