Why is hard panning not used anymore?

[logdrum]

I hated projects where they hard pan the bass because in real life bass and drums are encompassing, Bass is omni directional and the bass drum is too and the cymbals even though hi pitch actually have a low base tone, plus it is a wide left - right instrument, Hard pan everything else if you must but not the bass and drums. Usually the best is not hard panned and the sound stage is bigger with well defined cross placement

Also many pro live shows are mixed mono unless the song calls for it

 

[ReidK]

Most people listen on headphones now and that kind of separation can be pretty painful to listen to.

That's why good headphone amps have adjustable crossfeed. There are also software apps that do the same thing for digital sources.

 

[BigJohnAZ]

Depends on circumstances. First few Beatles albums were on 2 track machines and they mixed for mono, so no big deal. But, for the US market, Capitol wanted stereo mixes, so George put whatever was bounced into track 1 on one side and whatever what was on track 2 on the other side. They also attenuated Paul's bass during master cutting to keep the cutting head from bouncing out of the groove. Along with his Hofner, that's why his bad wasn't b very prominent. Those recordings were nuclear hard panned lol

"Normal" multitrack recordings since the early 70s up to now mix down to whatever the effect they want to create. Panning gives you separation, but, can be hard to listen to.

 

[Fuzzbass]

My favorite hard panned album is Live at Leeds by The Who. Entwistle left, Townshend right. No offense to Pete but I spent a lot of time listening to it panned mostly left!

 

[ardgedee]

That's why good headphone amps have adjustable crossfeed. There are also software apps that do the same thing for digital sources.

I have a scratch-built crossfeed box (built by a hobbyist with better electronic skills than me) in my office stereo system, between the DAC and amplifier. Don't use it often (and not at all when I'm listening through speakers) but it comes in handy especially for older recordings.

 

[Carl Hillman]

Back in the Stone Age, mixing consoles (like the UA610) only had Left-Center-Right panning switches instead of continuously variable pots.

 

[cfortner]

An exception, though, and one I still hear, is that many of the more subtle instruments/voices are hard panned, but not the main ones. Percussion instruments, a low-mixed background vocal, and such.

Thats my personal IEM-sound.

In the center are bass, bass drum, lead vocals, snare

Keyboards are stereo "over the clouds"

Both guitars are nearly hard panned legt/right, I need them a bit für rhythm and a bit more for intonation

Drums overhead also "over the clouds"

No toms on top, may be a little hihat near the center

That fits for me perfectly, may be others like other pannings more.

 

[ardgedee]

One, I suspect, is more obvious hard panning was more often used in the early days of stereo and the transition from mono / dual mono to true stereo. And like with a lot of new technology, there was a tendency to exaggerate, sort of how some early digital recordings are extremely bright. (Because of this exaggeration, a lot of early stereo recordings, like John Coltrane's Giant Steps and his other Atlantic albums, sound better in mono, as Trane's sax is in one channel in the stereo version).

In the 1950s they could do some absolutely amazing stereo productions. Sit down in front of a stereo system set up for excellent imaging and put on one of the late '50s Frank Sinatra orchestral albums, and you'll be able to pick out every individual musician on the soundstage space -- not just "the violins are in the left channel, the horns are in the right", but "the first violin is about a meter left of center, the cello is to the right of him and backstage a bit..." No hard panning.

The problem here, I suspect, is that when you don't have a home stereo that good (which, frankly, included almost everybody, both back then and today), the subtle acoustic cues that can convey that kind of detail are lost and it ends up feeling like a bigger wall of sound than a mono mix -- not necessarily worth the added expense of stereo production nor the upcharge (at the time) that stereo recordings cost the listener. On the other hand, hard panning did allow you to pick out individual instruments -- it was easy because the piano was in the left speaker and the drums were in the right speaker and made stereo recordings distinct.

Now that people mostly use headphones for music listening, neither the three-mic process that produced those old Sinatra sides (two for the whole soundstage, one for the singer) nor the hard panning of the '60s and '70s work quite as well. Binaural mixes are made for headphone listening but their soundstage collapses on speakers. Setting aside the addition of crossfeed widgets into headphone systems, there's no single perfect mix possible so most productions these days aim for a "good enough" that works for any listening method.

 

[Spectrum]

 

[jthisdell]

Years ago I was listening to some Yes with a friend, Steve Howe was playing two guitar tracks playing the exact same part, an electric panned to one side and a classical panned to the other. Sounded pretty cool.

I suspect the decline of this is because so much music is played on headphones as stated before, or in a car where you may not hear the two channels clearly or maybe a little blue tooth speaker. Fewer listeners sit in front of a proper stereo.

 

[FullumMusic]

Was listening to ‘Papa was a rolling stone’ while doing a quick component check, and noticed like other recordings from the era it was mixed hard panned.
The mix still sounded great and the hard panning of the tracks really gave the track good separation and feel.

So the question is why does it seem like no one hard pans anymore on recordings?
Phase issues when summed?
Loudness wars?

Just not cool by today’s standards?

Hard panning is still used. Just not in that way from the 60s where they might put the drums and bass hard left, and everything else hard right. (Or some variation of that).

A lot of those recordings were from when Stereo was new and they didn't really know what to do with it yet, and didn't fully understand the acoustics implications of panning audio between two speakers. They were just panning things, experimenting with different instrument groupings and just making more sonic space in the mix. Also, a lot of those albums were recording on 4 track tape, maybe 8 track at the highest-end studios. They had to subgroup a lot of stuff together, and a byproduct of that is things had to be panned hard together whether it was ideal or not.

Stereo is about creating 3D audio from 2 audio sources.

They absolutely still hard pan elements of a mix. But it's done in a balanced way. If a guitar is hard panned left, there will be something hard panned right to balance it out. Either a contrasting guitar, or keys, or even the Left guitar's reverb... something will be to the right. Some mix engineers use LCR mixing, where they only pan things Center, Hard Left, or Hard Right, and nothing in between.

I love those old recordings where they panned everything in bizarre ways, but more for the novelty and historical value of it. It really isn't an ideal way to mix a stereo field to create a 3D audio image at our ears, especially knowing what we know about the acoustic properties of different frequencies.

And on top of that, in headphones/earbuds, that 60s mixing style just doesn't work.

 

[OldShark]

I had an interesting experience recording an album for Kavi Alexander, a brilliant engineer/producer, right after he did Meeting by the River with Ry Cooder and Vishnu Mohan Bhatt. He recorded everything live to 2 track - 2" two track! Talk about bandwidth, literally. All tube signal path, one stereo mic. It was an acoustic album, like everything he did, and at the time he recorded in cathedrals during their off-hours (the middle of the night). His idea of "mixing" was "hey Kesslari, move 6 inches to your right on the bench". I thought at the time that he was either crazy or had incredibly big ears. It was the latter. When he invited me to preview the album on his very, very good stereo, I was amazed - the stereo separation and placement of the musicians was crystal clear. I could hear exactly where everyone was, and that's where they were from both my memory and when I looked at a photo from the session.

It was an amazing experience and taught me a lot.

Years later, I guess the Cowboy Junkies recorded "The Trinity Sessions" in a similar fashion but with an Ambisonic mic directly to tape (or rather DAT). That allowed for very specific panning, AFAIK.

 

[Smoove-Groove]

Yeah, the headphone thing I’m thinking. I listened to the stereo mix of Taxman on headphones not too long ago, and to me it sounded pretty bad. But on a pair of separated stereo speakers, it sounds great.

 

[DB66]

Sharon Jones records have hard panning.

 

[ardgedee]

Years later, I guess the Cowboy Junkies recorded "The Trinity Sessions" in a similar fashion but with an Ambisonic mic directly to tape (or rather DAT). That allowed for very specific panning, AFAIK.

That's not really panning because nobody was combining individual instruments' tracks to simulate an acoustic space. It was more like multitrack recording that already has the acoustic space containing the instruments; the mixdown more or less involves reassembling the acoustic space from the multiple tracks and reducing it to stereo, like building a large image by assembling a set of smaller photos that each contain a segment of the final image. More complicated than a two-mic or three-mic setup but maybe it works better for intimate recordings, especially when you don't have a lot of time to tune your setup and the room. iirc the Trinity Session was done on the down-low, they didn't really have permission for recording in the church so it called for some guerrilla recording techniques.

 

[MonetBass]

While working on a particularly dense section of a song the other day, one of the instruments was getting buried in the mix. So I panned it to the left (not hard, but enough to where it was moved out of the center) and it was much easier to hear. Because it was no longer competing for the same space in terms of frequencies, it stood out. The only tracks I typically leave in the center are bass drum, bass, and vocals. Everything else gets panned to either side with none being panned the same amount. The only time I pan anything hard is for textural stuff.

 

[D.A.R.K.]

I had an interesting experience recording an album for Kavi Alexander, a brilliant engineer/producer, right after he did Meeting by the River with Ry Cooder and Vishnu Mohan Bhatt. He recorded everything live to 2 track - 2" two track! Talk about bandwidth, literally. All tube signal path, one stereo mic. It was an acoustic album, like everything he did, and at the time he recorded in cathedrals during their off-hours (the middle of the night). His idea of "mixing" was "hey Kesslari, move 6 inches to your right on the bench". I thought at the time that he was either crazy or had incredibly big ears. It was the latter. When he invited me to preview the album on his very, very good stereo, I was amazed - the stereo separation and placement of the musicians was crystal clear. I could hear exactly where everyone was, and that's where they were from both my memory and when I looked at a photo from the session.

It was an amazing experience and taught me a lot.

Meeting by the River is just mind blowing.
We have Atmos mixing and capture now, so incorporating that technique but with spatial microphone systems would be such a blast, someone must be doing it.

 

[Hypocrite]

I don't know anyone who doesn't advocate for hard-panning.
What music are you even listening to?

 

[Carl Hillman]

Back in the Stone Age, mixing consoles (like the UA610) only had Left-Center-Right panning switches instead of continuously variable pots.

Photo:

 

[Podgorny]

I suspect the decline of this is because so much music is played on headphones as stated before, or in a car where you may not hear the two channels clearly or maybe a little blue tooth speaker. Fewer listeners sit in front of a proper stereo.

With very few exceptions, music is not being created for headphone listening. Even when it should be (immersive formats).

I neglected to mention in my earlier explanation that another reason for the trend toward left-right balance is the abundant use of bus compression and limiting in recordings over the last few decades. Stereo-linked compressors will compress both sides of a stereo input, even if what they're reacting to is only on one channel, creating a strange pumping effect in the opposite channel. If you unlink the two channels, this can create a strange shifting of the stereo image from left-to-right, as elements that are panned to the center are reduced in volume in one channel, while not reduced in the other. This can be mitigated by recording doubles or adding complementary aspects in each channel, as I mentioned previously.