Radio Ad Commercial Panning

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Wolfman140

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Hey guys...
OK...all I'm doing is just having a simple musical medley in the background of the announcer. I figured...the way to go...would be make a copy of the background music (having 2 tracks) and panning each hard left and hard right...also...setting one of them a tiny bit backward so the ear can hear a small difference thus differentiate enough to notice the spaced apart panning. THEN, I would put the announcement smack dab center to hit the listener in the face...

Now...that sounds great in stereo...but...my buddy tells me to mix the ad down to mono and see how it sounds because all radio ads should sound in good in mono he says..>Well...I did...and there's definately some phase problems as it sounds muddy and shitty...SO...I ask you all...whats a fella to do in my predicament? Is my panning scheme good or bad? Should I do something different?

-Kevin
 
Dont do the duplicating and delaying, that's going to end up with phase problems really quickly in something meant for radio.

Just keep it mono down the middle, maybe cut out some of the midrange frequencies that are important in speech regognition, and be sure that the voice is easily heart above the music at all times.... listener shouldn't have to listen too closely, and should be forced to pay attention to the voiceover.
 
And if you're too far away from an FM radio station, the radio automatically switches to mono.
 
Professionally one of the things I do is commercial audio for radio. Don't get fancy--keep it simple. The media is NOT the message--the message is. Any fancy panning tricks are going to be potentially problematic.

I did my stuff in MONO. Nobody notices or cares, it's a commercial. Just make sure the background elements or soundbed is subdued enough that the voiceover can be clearly understood.

Save the fancy tricks for music production. Radio production demands simplicity and sticking to the basics.
 
Compress the voice quite a bit to give it that thick radio sound.
 
Thanks guys....Yeah thats what I ended up doing...It is only a voice over and music. So I figured I'd keep it simple. Thanks everyone.
-Kevin
 
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