Panning is the spread of a monaural signal in a stereo or multi-channel sound field - it is critical to the make up of the stereo image.
Usually, the most problematic area of the sound field is the center, as this is normally the busiest place within a mix. It is advisable to keep the kick, snare, bass, and vocal in the center as they provide the music with a solid grounding and help aid the rhythm (although these rules can often be broken to great effect). For every other instrument, however, it is advisable to position them either side of the center.
When using Export Selected Audio, however, Audacity will Export the selection from all selected tracks even if some if those tracks are grayed-out and inaudible on playback. Keyboard shortcuts: Shift+U toggles muting on the currently focused track which has the yellow border, and Shift + S toggles soloing. Free, open source, cross-platform audio software. Audacity is an easy-to-use, multi-track audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. Developed by a group of volunteers as open source and offered free of charge. Oil paint brushes best. Amazing support community.
Panning several instruments hard left and right can be tempting to create a wide stereo sound which can produce an excellent sonic sound, but generally should be avoided. Many instruments can soon become stacked in the same area leading to a masked, muddy sound. Instead of panning hard left and right for all instruments, find a place inside those extremes.
To maintain balance within a mix, for every element panned one way, another element should be panned the other
Panning gives instruments their own space in the stereo field. It can be used to eliminate masking by moving sounds out of the way of other sounds so the listener can clearly define them.
A good example of masking can be seen when two electric guitars are playing simultaneously as they both quickly eat up valuable frequency bandwidth. Simply panning one left by 40% and the other right by 40% can help to free up mix room.
There are no absolute rules for panning. Like with every aspect of mixing, it is best to experiment and use your ears. If it sounds good, roll with it.
Suggested Panning Positions
The table below suggests some commonly used positions. A clock face is used as the comparable analogy to panning, with 7 and 5 on the clock being hard left and hard right. Pan the instruments anywhere between these positions.
| Instrument | Position | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Kick | Bass heavy instruments, such as the kick, should be kept near the centre as to not disrupt the balance of the track | |
| Snare | The snare reinforces the rhythm of a track and therefore should be set around the centre | |
| Toms | One tom to the left and the other to the right helps balance up the mix. Toms are best used on fills only. Beware if Toms are set too wide they can be very distracting and over-powering in the mix | |
| Hi-Hat | Hi Hats can be panned flexibly as they emit high frequencies and do not disrupt the balance too much | |
| Overheads | Overheads are best panned fairly wide but should never be too loud as to distract the listener | |
| Bass Guitar | Bass heavy instruments, such as the bass guitar, should be kept near the centre as to not disrupt the balance of the track | |
| Rhythm Guitar | If the rhythm guitar has been double track pan the two tracks hard left and hard right | |
| Acoustic Guitar | If the acoustic guitar has been double tracked or recorded in stereo pan the two tracks hard left and hard right | |
| Piano | Mono | For a stereo recording of the piano, pan the two tracks left and right. If recorded in mono try panning just off centre. |
| Strings | Wide pads and strings help to really open up a track | |
| Vocals | Vocals should generally be kept dead centre, although there are many stereo techniques which should not be overlooked |
Creating a Project
Importing Files
We'll be extracting our sounds from the allRecordings file and placing them in our new project, using a variety of audacity's actions. Here's a capture of the sound signal of our allRecordings.aiff file:
You'll see a couple small waves in the file, this is where there's deviation (or louder recorded noise) compared to the rest of the file (i.e. the silence). You'll also notice, too, that the waves are exceptionally small.. This is because the sounds were recorded at with a Powerbook's Internal Mic in a noisy environment; furthermore, because of the noisy environment, the microphone sensitivity was turned way down to try and reduce the amount of background noise in the recording. So, all said and done, the recordings are fairly clear (but definitely not Pixar quality) and will suffice for us to learn how to work with layering and audio manipulation in Audacity.
1. Open audactiy and start a new project (FILE > NEW) and then open the file: allRecordings.aif (FILE > OPEN).
In the empty project, add a new Audio Track (PROJECT > NEW AUDIO TRACK).
2. Select the first sound in our recording and paste it into the empty track. You can select portions of a sound file using the mouse (drag a timed section and paste it in).
Adjust the track level and pan settings so that the sound comes out of the left channel and is slightly quiet. Onenote teacher planner template.
3. Create a new audio track, select the next sound (in allRecordings), paste it into the new track.
With the new sound pasted in, you'll want to create some silence in front of it so that it plays at the appropriate time. Drag a selection of time on the second track and then generate silence (GENERATE > SILENCE).
4. You'll see that a single solid line is put in front of your sound.. you can add more silence, or delete some (by selecting a portion of the timeline and hitting DELETE) so that the sound plays at an appropriate time (i.e. not too soon or not too long after the first sound).
Adjust the track level and pan so that the sound comes out from the RIGHT channel.
5. Repeat the process above to insert the next sound (which should say “i'm walking away from you now”) into a third audio track in your project.
Add two more copies of the same sound at the end of the track so that the voice repeats itself 3 times.
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6. Zoom into the end of the third track and select the portion with the sound waves. Then, choose the ENVELOPE tool from the toolbox (top-left).
7. Adjust the levels using the white nodes that appear along your selection. Simply click and drag (up or down).
8. Continue doing this until the end of the track, try and get a gradient.. also, just get used to the way audacity works with levels (audacity is a very simple program, needless to say.. it's interactivity isn't as robust as audition or protools).
9. The sounds in allRecordings are meant to be linear.. so continue adding them, focusing on adjusting the timing, levels and pacing of your samples across tracks. You can position some of the samples to overlay one another, making it sound like one person is talking from 3 / 4 different places at once.
Audacity Panning Plugin
10. When you're finished with allRecordings, open the music file spies.aif, import it into a final audio track and adjust its levels so you can hear the voice speaking overtop of everything else.
Try cutting and fading it out as an ending to this project.
11. Save the file as a .WAV (FILE > WAV) so that it can be played back on your PC.
Download | Audacity
12. This is what the final .aup project looks like for the sample final.WAV that comes with this weeks source files.
Audacity Panning Automation