Hard Pan is not Hard Pan?

[svenh]

The other day when i tried to hard pan a few tracks I was surprised to discover that I could not really hard pan. E.g. if I tried to hard pan to the left, I would still get a bit of sound in the right channel.

I tried to hard pan the track mixer channel, the master bus as well as inserting Line Mixer 6:2, but nothing helped.

I had no send fx (as e.g. reverb) that could bleed into the opposit channel.

Is this the way it should work? Or is there anything strange with my sound card (Scarlett 6i6) or audio driver?

[TritoneAddiction]

Weird. Never had this problem myself. Hard panning works just fine here.

[Biolumin3sc3nt]

A hard pan is always gonna be a hard pan... If You want to share a project file, that will eliminate a ton of guessing and time

[WillyOD]

Stereo Width?

[way2cool]

its’ bcuz of if you are in having another devices on a dream stereo effects I learn that in logic daw used to have until before which I sell already and have in that same problem there so turn it off the dream field right now and to stop those issue from that

[svenh]

I just got the tip to look at the master channel level indicator. (How come I did not think of this myself? ) The right channel does not show any signal at all so I guess the problem is not within the DAW, but rather some kind of cross talk in my sound card. And, it is not that big so it might not be a problem - I was just surprised when I discovered this.

Thanks for your replies!

[Proboscis]

How about you try and pan to the left, then turn the left monitor off (or remove the leads if you don't have active monitors with an on/off switch). When the right monitor alone is the only speaker on, do you still hear something ?

I have been having L/R issues myself, not quite what you describe, but still of some concern. I felt for a while that one ear had significant hearing loss (I've spent probably 1,000 hours in my lifetime around live heavy rock/metal bands so it's of no surprise that there would be some damage).

I've done all manner of elimination testing in the past week to determine why the right side is so much lower, including checking my monitor settings, changing over the monitors between L/R, ran a sine wave through them with a microphone to actually see the dB levels, and can't work it out. It appears to NOT be an issue with with the monitors, and it's also not my hearing, since when I physically swing around 180º the lower hearing side is not reversed either !

So I put it down to one of two things. There is some sort of neurological trick my mind is playing, or at least conscious perception is at play.... or that my room resonation is reflecting sound waves. Even at moderate volume levels, room acoustics is sometimes a huge problem. While this is not particularly a L/R issue, after doing some crude tests, I have discovered that at around 137Hz and again at 342Hz there is a considerable spike in 'sound'

None of this may be relevant to you, but I thought it worth sharing in the event that you want to keep trying to work out what your issue is not by finding the problem, but instead using process of elimination to at least determine what the problem isn't, if that makes any sense.

[WongoTheSane]

I just got the tip to look at the master channel level indicator. (How come I did not think of this myself? ) The right channel does not show any signal at all so I guess the problem is not within the DAW, but rather some kind of cross talk in my sound card. And, it is not that big so it might not be a problem - I was just surprised when I discovered this.

Thanks for your replies!

Or some FX? Some headphones have a "surround" option, and so do some audio cards. You could also have set it up yourself without realizing, for instance when changing the sound settings while watching a movie. Worth investigating...

[Aquila]

you don't have a stereo widener in your master chain by any chance?

[FLVZ]

I just got the tip to look at the master channel level indicator. (How come I did not think of this myself? ) The right channel does not show any signal at all so I guess the problem is not within the DAW, but rather some kind of cross talk in my sound card. And, it is not that big so it might not be a problem - I was just surprised when I discovered this.

Thanks for your replies!

Any send effects on the channel ? I know the send FX are post mastering strip which something I find super annoying because I have to HPF each individual effect since there is no 'SendBus' to control the behaviour of the sends globally.

[selig]

I just got the tip to look at the master channel level indicator. (How come I did not think of this myself? ) The right channel does not show any signal at all so I guess the problem is not within the DAW, but rather some kind of cross talk in my sound card. And, it is not that big so it might not be a problem - I was just surprised when I discovered this.

Thanks for your replies!

Curious how you were determining you had a problem in the first place - I had (wrongly) assumed you were looking at the Big Meter and seeing some bleed on the opposite channel when hard panning!

[RobC]

I remember an issue like this with the old mixers. When the pan knob turned from 0 to only 63 max instead of 64, so there was 1 unit left in the signal. When I checked the rendered audio in GoldWave, I saw that the supposedly silent channel isn't 100% clean.

[selig]

I remember an issue like this with the old mixers. When the pan knob turned from 0 to only 63 max instead of 64, so there was 1 unit left in the signal. When I checked the rendered audio in GoldWave, I saw that the supposedly silent channel isn't 100% clean.

If I'm understanding you correctly, this would be normal. If you don't turn the pan knob all the way, it won't pan all the way.

OTOH, if you're saying that because the value on the display didn't say a certain number, that the pan amount was affected, this isn't true - the numbers are somewhat arbitrary in that there are an odd number of positions on a pan knob but an even number of values between 1-127. Logically, if "0" is the center then one pan knob will read 63 and the other will read 64 - but this would in no way affect the actual panning, which isn't dependent on the number on the knob!
For clarity, this is also why the Big Mixer uses a different scale with an odd number of positions (-100 to +100 with "0" in the center). The actual pan parameter (behind the scenes) goes from min to max at each end of the knob's travel - the number that is displayed is totally up to the UI designer, nothing more (unless there was a bug, of course).

[svenh]

I just got the tip to look at the master channel level indicator. (How come I did not think of this myself? ) The right channel does not show any signal at all so I guess the problem is not within the DAW, but rather some kind of cross talk in my sound card. And, it is not that big so it might not be a problem - I was just surprised when I discovered this.

Thanks for your replies!

Curious how you were determining you had a problem in the first place - I had (wrongly) assumed you were looking at the Big Meter and seeing some bleed on the opposite channel when hard panning!

Long story short: I discovered this when mixing. My hobby studio is in my bed room without sonic treatment so I always mix with head phones. I wondered what the mix would sound like when hard panning one of the tracks to the right. After fiddling a bit, I soloed the track and then doubted that it was dead silent in my left ear. I removed the cup on my right ear to listen only with the cup on my left ear. And then I could hear the track vaguely. It is very low volume so I don't really think that it impacts my music production, but I was surprised that it was not dead silent.

[svenh]

It turns out that it is the head phone jacks of my Scarlett 6i6 that gives a bit of cross talk. If I use my studio monitors, the left speaker goes dead silent if I hard pan right.

Maybe this flaw is a good thing for mixing, emulating a bit of cross talk that would happen when listening through speakers!

[RobC]

I remember an issue like this with the old mixers. When the pan knob turned from 0 to only 63 max instead of 64, so there was 1 unit left in the signal. When I checked the rendered audio in GoldWave, I saw that the supposedly silent channel isn't 100% clean.

If I'm understanding you correctly, this would be normal. If you don't turn the pan knob all the way, it won't pan all the way.

OTOH, if you're saying that because the value on the display didn't say a certain number, that the pan amount was affected, this isn't true - the numbers are somewhat arbitrary in that there are an odd number of positions on a pan knob but an even number of values between 1-127. Logically, if "0" is the center then one pan knob will read 63 and the other will read 64 - but this would in no way affect the actual panning, which isn't dependent on the number on the knob!
For clarity, this is also why the Big Mixer uses a different scale with an odd number of positions (-100 to +100 with "0" in the center). The actual pan parameter (behind the scenes) goes from min to max at each end of the knob's travel - the number that is displayed is totally up to the UI designer, nothing more (unless there was a bug, of course).

I think it was a bug in some past version. I did mean that 63 was the maximum, as in +100%.
I just checked and this seems to be solved by now.
I prefer the -100 to +100 values, cause that 63 bugs me, even if logical.

I think I even used some Reason devices, with the left panning only, and some twisted device duplication and audio routing / merging in the past because of this.
(Unless I remember wrong - but tiny chance for that this time.)