How to Pan and Balance Audio in Premiere Pro

When you are getting started with Adobe Premiere Pro you will find that often your recorded sound needs adjustments and mixing. The "Audio Mixer" is an available tool used in Adobe Premiere Pro that allows for the controlling of audio panning and balancing. “Panning” is the moving of audio from one channel to another and back, and “Balancing” is used to redistribute multi-channel audio tracks among the channels of another multi-channel track to create a full sound. Both panning and balancing are techniques used with audio tracks that are "stereo," not mono.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Adobe Premiere Pro
• Digitized video clips with audio

1. Open the Audio Mixer panel. When your mono or stereo track is outputting to a stereo track, a round knob will appear in the Mixer.

2. Drag either the pan control knob, or use your mouse to adjust the numeric value located below the knob. Rotate the knob to pan and balance the audio in the left and right output channels.

3. Balance an audio track that is going to a 5.1 surround track by going to the Audio Mixer, and then click on the "tray." A square tray will appear when this is an available option. The tray contains what is known as a “puck” that you can drag to a point anywhere in the tray.

4. Move the puck directly to the center or to the right or left channel by clicking on it, and then drag it to a "pocket," an indentation on the panel, that appears on the edge of the tray.

5. Choose either the Selection tool or the Pen tool from the Toolbox, and adjust the levels on the tracks.

Tips & Warnings

• Pan controls will not appear if the track is outputting to a submix or to the master track that contains a number of channels equal to or less than the number of channels in the track you are adjusting. You can pan and balance the entire sequence if you use the entire sequence as a track within another sequence.