91 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
91 lines
3.6 KiB
Markdown
+++
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title = "Panning"
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description = "How to pan signal in Ardour"
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chapter = false
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weight = 3
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+++
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Once you have established a good balance of levels on all the tracks, you can
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begin to think about panning.
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Panning helps to establish a _stereo field_, a relative space between the
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speakers in which to place your sounds and instruments.
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## The Panning Interface
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The panning control in Ardour is located in the middle of the mixer strip.
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A mono track will have a mono panner. It looks like this:
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A stereo track will have a stereo panner, like this:
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### Mono Panner
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The default mono panner distributes 1 input to 2 outputs. Its behavior is
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controlled by a single parameter, the *position*. By default, the panner is
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centered. You can change the position by clicking and dragging directly on the
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mono panner. Right-click on the panner to access other options.
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### Stereo Panner
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The default stereo panner distributes 2 inputs to 2 outputs. By default, the
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panner is centered as well.
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## Panning Tricks
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A more extensive discussion of panning philosophy and techniques is beyond the
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scope of this tutorial, but here are some general rules of thumb:
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* Guitars tend to be panned to the left and right.
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* Vocals and bass tend to placed in the center. You want to create
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a balance so that one side is not louder then the other.
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* Headphones may be helpful in determining how instruments should be panned, and
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whether the mix feels lopsided because one side is too loud.
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Two other tools that are useful in creating a "spatial" or stereo field are
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_Reverb_ and _Delay_. These effects can be used together with sends to
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create a drum send which would be further back in the mix with more Reverb, and
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a vocal send which might have a little more Delay but sound closer than the
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drums. Please see the sections on using plugins and sends later in this part of
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the tutorial for more information.
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{{% notice tip %}}
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Always keep an eye on your levels while panning tracks! Panning a track to one
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channel increases the level of that channel. This may change the balance of
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levels you set up in the previous chapter, and in extreme cases can result in
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clipping. When this happens, reduce the overall levels of that track and check
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again how it sits in the mix.
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{{% /notice %}}
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## Multichannel Panning
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As Ardour supports multichannel tracks, it will also provide a
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multichannel-specific panning user interface for those tracks as well. Here is
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an example of a 4-channel audio track. You can see that there is a small user
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interface right in the mixer and a larger editor window that you can access by
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clicking anywhere in the empty space inside the panning area:
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Unless you work on projects where e.g.
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[Ambisonics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambisonics) is involved, you will
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probably mostly deal with multichannel tracks when you use samplers,
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especially drums/percussion samplers. As different instruments in a drum kit
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tend to get a different treatment in post-production (e.g. how they are
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processed with a compressor), samplers tend to create a channel per
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instrument: one per kick drum, one per each snare etc. The idea is that you
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would route a channel into a separate bus and process it differently. Using a
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panner control in that case is unlikely to happen.
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## Continuing
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By now, you should have a collection of tracks which are both mixed well and
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have an exciting stereo image. In the following chapters, we will learn about
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using plugins to enhance the sound of your mix.
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Next: [USING PLUGINS](../using-plugins)
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