How to Pan Speakers

Speakers can do much more than is noticeable to the untrained ear.

Panning is an audio mixing technique that is a part of the process of making music sound full, wide and distinct so that all components of a song are not front and center. This technique is used in all professionally recorded music as well as most live performances, and it focuses specifically on spreading music away from the center of the speakers. By panning instruments to different spots within a stereo speaker setup, sounds become clearer because the various frequencies of instruments and effects can be kept from overlapping and clashing with one another.

Things You'll Need

• Mixer (option 1)
• Computer (option 2)
• Music-editing software (option 2)

Instructions

1. Set up your mixer and the performers' equipment if you are engineering a live performance. Turn on your computer and open your editing program, such as Pro Tools, Reason, Ableton or Logic, if you are recording or creating music.

2. Add various instruments to their own tracks on your digital mixer in the computer program. Record or create your song before panning.

3. Play back your recorded performance if you are on a computer, and have the group or performer do a full band sound check.

4. Adjust the "Pan" knobs on your mixer to make instruments more present in one speaker than in the other. Vocal tracks, kick drums and bass guitars should not be panned, but other instruments, such as guitars, cymbals, toms, pianos and violins, should be panned according to where the instruments would be on a stage, both in live and recorded performances.

5. Pan higher-pitched instruments to the right and lower-pitched instruments to the left when possible. This is the general guideline for panning large-scale recordings, such as film scores, electronic music and other productions with many instruments. This is not a steadfast rule, of course, as some songs may have five distinct high-frequency instruments that are played at various times and panned across the audio spectrum.

6. Experiment with sound location until the performance sounds most pleasing to you. There are multiple ways to pan any one song and create unique, subtle variants in the way it sounds.

Tips & Warnings

• A great technique for getting a thicker guitar or other instrument sound in a recording is to record the part twice and pan one take as far left as possible and the other as far right as possible.

• Panning two instruments of a similar frequency to the same location can create a single perceived rhythm, such as an "up and down" effect between eighth and sixteenth notes, whereas panning them to opposite sides would make them sound like two individual instruments.