Ablation Pan Law contradiction?

[losangeles]

The following passage is on one of Ableton’s online fact sheets:

“Live uses constant power panning with sinusoidal gain curves. Output is 0 dB at the center position and signals panned fully left or right will be increased by +3 dB. In order to minimize this volume change, it may be helpful to narrow the overall stereo width before doing extreme panning. This can be done via the Width control in the Utility device.”


I’m having difficulty reconciling why it mentions a suggestion for minimizing volume changes, when constant power pan laws are designed to maintain volume as the pan changes. Is there something I’m missing?

[BertKoor]

There is more than one strategy how to pan stereo material, regardless of what's stated above. That is a description of what happens to panning of a mono source. If the source is stereo and you pan it hard to one side, what do you expect is mixed in from the other source channel? That is not defined here.

If the source material is already stereo it might:
a) be already somewhat panned
b) be somewhat out of phase

So if you are planning to do extreme panning, then imho it does make sense to collapse it to mono beforehand. Just to avoid surprises...

[losangeles]

There is more than one strategy how to pan stereo material, regardless of what's stated above. That is a description of what happens to panning of a mono source. If the source is stereo and you pan it hard to one side, what do you expect is mixed in from the other source channel? That is not defined here.

If the source material is already stereo it might:
a) be already somewhat panned
b) be somewhat out of phase

So if you are planning to do extreme panning, then imho it does make sense to collapse it to mono beforehand. Just to avoid surprises...

But collapsing to mono would change the signal desired (if only L or R are desired); moreover, even if you do collapse to Miki abs then full pan, you’re still getting a 3dB boost due to the pan law governing the pan pot- so I’m not sure why it says that can help diminish the volume increase?

The only way I can see it making sense is that it’s not written clearly and means to say you can diminish the volume *difference* between extreme panned settings by first sunning to mono; this would account for stereo channels (which may have different levels, as you mention above)?

[losangeles]

Mispost

[losangeles]

Mispost

[losangeles]

Mispost

[losangeles]

Mispost