Topmusicanswers
Stereo separation widens your sound, so it sounds bigger, more wide, spacious. Panning places an instrument in a spot. If you close your eyes, panning should let you imagine the guitar being played on the right, while the piano is on the left, and the drummer in the middle.
- What's the difference between panning and stereo separation?
- What is stereo separation?
- Should I use stereo separation?
- Can you pan a stereo track?
What's the difference between panning and stereo separation?
Generally, panning is pushing a sound to the left or right of the mix to create room down the middle for more important elements like vocals or leads. Whereas stereo width is how wide a sound feels. If it sounds like it's coming from both sides at the same time, then it has a wide stereo width.
What is stereo separation?
stereo separation, or stereo split, is basically the act, of grabbing the two individual audio channels of a stereo file, which basically contains two mono files, and rendering them as a individual files.
Should I use stereo separation?
Achieving Stereo Separation
If you want to replicate the natural separation of a live music performance, you should purchase a stereo system that has only two speakers. This allows the stereo system to imitate the separation between the right and left ears that naturally occurs at a live performance.
Can you pan a stereo track?
Something that many people do is pan all stereo tracks (like piano, acoustic guitar, strings etc.) around the centre. But this doesn't always give you the best result. Whilst panning these around the centre with your chosen width can sound great, there's nothing wrong with panning them off to one side.
