Panning for headphones

[boaakerstrom]

Although I have trialled Waveform in the past, I'm really quite new to using it on actual projects. I have been looking at Boz Digital Labs Pan Knob 2 and just wanted to ask if it is possible to achieve similar results natively in Waveform. As in keeping some frequencies in the center, whilst panning others left or right.

[Watchful]

Not exactly. I'm not a user of Pan Knob 2, but...

1. Waveform is like nearly everything else when it comes to panning: you can go 0-100% left or 0-100% right.

2. You can of course replace its default pan utility on any/every track with Pan Knob 2, if you have it.

3. Because Waveform's pan/output feature is actually a plug in, you can in fact daisy chain them. How this could work for you (and potentially be an improvement over Pan Knob 2)...

a. Place a filter before the pan plug in, set to whatever frequency you like
b. Place a send AFTER the pan plug in but BEFORE the filter
c. On another track, place the corresponding return BEFORE the pan
d. On that second track, place a filter AFTER the send but BEFORE the pan, and set it to a different frequency.

You can keep doing this for as many different frequency settings as you like. For example, the higher the frequency, the more it pans left; the lower, the more it pans right. Something in middle could be centered, or even colored by a third filter and set to a different direction.

Or set filters and different pan settings on the same track, daisy-chained, for some crazy chaotic results.

[Watchful]

Here's a screenshot of how I might do it. Might not be what you want, exactly, but the effect could be fun in its own way.

Clipboard_04-19-2026_01.jpg

[talby]

There are "crossover" plugins, which split the signal into various bands, with the idea to achieve this by an algorithm sounding cleaner than doing it yourself by various single band filter plugins. Two crossover plugins come into my mind:
- Robert van der Helm, 6 bands, Win, Mac, Linux
- LSP, 8 bands, Linux

But I couldn't teach you how to use them, as I never applied them myself.
The basic idea is that you place them as a multi-out wrapper in a submix. Use an AUX SEND on your original signal and the corresponding AUX RETURN on each of the submix tracks carrying the crossover wrapper plugins having appeared there. After you configured for each of it the band which it shall separate, you place your pan plugin behind each of it.

If you find out how in detail this works, please let us know!

[pough]

similar results natively in Waveform

It depends on whether or not you're using the Free or Pro version. The latter comes with a crossover plugin, which you could use in a Rack.

[boaakerstrom]

Thanks for everyone's input. I spent some time trying a couple of the suggestions. Got pretty close to what I'm after - except when it comes to usability. Having the dedicated plugin is just a bit more convenient.

I might get the Pan Knob 2 plugin as it is on sale at the moment. Anyway, trying some new stuff in Waveform is helpful as I feel I'm getting more used to how things work.

[irpacynot]

Thanks for everyone's input. I spent some time trying a couple of the suggestions. Got pretty close to what I'm after - except when it comes to usability. Having the dedicated plugin is just a bit more convenient.

I might get the Pan Knob 2 plugin as it is on sale at the moment. Anyway, trying some new stuff in Waveform is helpful as I feel I'm getting more used to how things work.

I'm still pretty much a newbie to all this, but couldn't you use something like TDR Nova to pan frequencies left/right?

[boaakerstrom]

Perhaps TDR Nova can achieve at least a similar outcome. There are some other options as well. Everything I tried was considerably less user-friendly than having a dedicated plugin - and there are alternatives to the one I went with. So as I like things simple to use it was £10.50 well spent.