Tweet

Avoid mixing with headphones only. Headphones make you interpret the mix, the f requency response and the dynamics quite different compared to the experience you get when you listen to the mix through ordinary speakers.

However, there's one occasion when you can benefit from using headphones and its when you're adjusting the panning. It's easier to hear how the instruments are positioned in the stereo field when you're using headphones than when you're using speakers. One reason is that the sound which is coming out of each speaker will go into both ears. With headphones, you'll hear the left channel only in your left ear and the right channel only in your right ear. With speakers the sound will bounce on the walls in the room and in the worst case you might experience unwanted resonance, which reduces the stereo effect. Such problems are not inherent when you use headphones.

So when you're working in your home- or project studio, you may have a pair of headphones connected to the mixer (or the headphone output of your sound card if you're using a computer based mixer). Don't use the headphones when you're adjusting the levels or when you're working with filters etc, but only when you need to adjust the pan settings. That should be relatively seldom.

Normally (but there are no strict rules, this is art) a mix shouldn't contain any extreme pan settings. In other words try to avoid panning instruments to the far left or far right. It's better to stay within the range of say 50% to the far left and 50% to the far right.

Non symmetric layouts might work in some cases, because it depends on which instruments that are used on each track. Instruments which only occur a few times in a mix can indeed be panned to the extreme left or right. On the other hand, the more frequent an instrument is used, the more important is it that its panning is balanced by another instrument in the opposite direction.

There are several reasons to avoid extreme pan settings.

If your track is played on mono gear, then some vendors might have connected only the left (or only the right) channel to the speaker. Then if you've panned an instrument to say the far right channel, that instrument will sound much lower than the rest of the instruments efficiently destroying your mix. Although this is not a problem with most hi-tech gear, there are indeed simple and cheap FM radios, which don't sum the left and right channels, but connect only one of them to the speaker.

Another problem with an extreme panning layout is that it becomes more difficult to create a mix which sounds good, balancing all the instruments correctly. The panning could feel strange for the listener. It can be very irritating to have, say, the bass in the left ear throughout the song, not the least if the bass sound is very unusual and there's no corresponding instrument in the right channel which balances that instrument. The same applies to drums. Panning, say, the hi-hat to the far right might create a stereo field which doesn't feel right for the user. Symmetry is the keyword here. If you put something to the left, then you need to put something in the right channel to compensate for it. And if you choose to put an instrument such as a hi-hat to the far left, then you're in trouble because it will be played continously, for example 4 or 8 times per beat. To compensate for that, you need an instrument in the far right channel which is played almost as frequently, to balance the hi-hat. And your song might contain very few instruments which can do that. It's not impossible, but it's difficult.

An easier way out is to stay within a reasonably narrow panning range, e.g. between 50% to the left and 50% to the right.

Then it will be easier to distribute the instruments across the stereo field, because an unbalanced layout won't be as noticeable and irritating for the user as it would be if the whole range of the stereo field was used.

So how could a panning layout look? Let's have a look at a 10 track recording which contains the following instruments.

Track 1 Bass

Track 2 Pad

Track 3 Lead synth (left)

Track 4 Lead synth (right)

Track 5 Bass drum

Track 6 Snare drum

Track 7 Hand claps

Track 8 Open and closed hihats

Track 9 Ride cymbal

Track 10 Crash cymbal

The bass is played reasonably fast, all the time. Thus it occupies quite a lot of space in the mix. Then we keep it in the centre of the stereo field, because otherwise it could create a bad feeling for the listener if it's played all the time and is mixed to the left or right. So we're conservative and position it in the middle of the stereo field.

The pad plays chords, around one chord per beat, so it lies more in the background and doesn't play as many notes as the bass does. So we can experiment with this one and position it a bit to the left in the mix, to be more precise 50% to the left.

Now the balance of the whole mix has been damaged, because there's one track in the middle and one to the left. It'll feel strange for the listener when there are things going on in the middle and to the left, but nothing's in the right channel. So we need to do something about it.

The lead synth is a stereo sound (two channels) which we use to compensate the panning in track 2. Track 2 has moved the overall mix over to the left side so we need to balance it back again to the right side. So we put the left channel (track 3) in the middle and the right channel (track 4) 50% to the right in the mix.

Now we've compensated for track 2 and got the mix back into balance again.

The bass drum follows almost the same pattern as the bass. To make it more interesting than putting the bass drum in the centre, together with the bass, then we move the panning of the bass 10% to the left and put the bass drum 10% to the right. Thus, the balance is kept and we introduce a cool stereo effect when the bass drum and the bass are played almost, but not exactly, at the same time.

The snare drum is played on beat 3, at the same time as the bass drum. We can put it 15% to the left.

The hand claps are played on beat 3 as well, at the same time as the snare drum, so we create a small stereo effect by panning it 15% to the right.

The closed hi-hat plays on beats 1, 2, 3 and the open hi-hat opens up on beat 4. So they are played quite fast and would cause too much unevenness if they were panned to the extreme left or right. So we keep them in the centre of the stereo field. It might be possible to fine adjust these say 5% to the left or right, but we go for the centre.

Now it's time to pan the ride cymbal and we suddenly realize that it's played reasonably fast too, on beats 1 and 3, thus half the speed of the hi-hats. But since the ride cymbal has such a long decay, the impression for the listener is that it occupies as much space in the mix as the hi-hats do.

So we adjust the hihats so they're 15% to the left and then put the ride cymbal at 15% to the right in the mix, balancing the hi-hats in a nice way.

The crash cymbal is used very seldom, only at the start of every 8th bar. So it doesn't really matter how we pan it, because it won't irritate the listener by knocking on either the left or right channel all the time. So we can pan it say 40% to the left.

That's it. The individual tracks have been balanced against each other so the balance is not falling over to the left or to the right side of the stereo field.

If an instrument is panned to the left, then there should be another instrument which compensates, being panned to the right.

As you might understand it's all about balancing the mix. And exactly how you balance the mix depends on which sounds you use and how frequently they're played. If a sound is playing rapidly over and over again, then you'd better be careful if you mix it in another position than to the centre, because you'd need to balance it with something else.

It also depends on how long the decay of the sound is of course. The ride cymbal has a long tail (decay), so it could be balanced together with the hi-hats although they're played much more frequently, because the hi-hats have a much shorter decay time.

In the end you need to listen carefully. Over and over again. Use headphones to adjust the panning. Then listen to mix in speakers and in headphones. Does it sound good in speakers? And in headphones? Great. You've done it.

Arthur Andersson is a writer and a musician who works at MHC Synthesizers and Effects (http://www.mhc.se).