For the historians: When did pan pots become standard fare?

[144dB]

Hey all,

 

I tried Googling this several times, but couldn't come up with an answer...

 

My understanding is that the first stereo consoles had a three position switch for panning (left, center, and right), and I'm wondering when continuous pan pots became the norm.

 

Just curious...

 

Todd

[Richard King]

Can't say when pan pots arrived, but I can tell you that the board I first worked on in the mid '70's had the LCR switches and big rotary volume controls. I used to create my own "pan pots" by splitting a signal into two channels. I would assign one channel left, the other right. I then could control where the signal ended up by adjusting the relative level of each of the channels, sitting there rotating the large volume pots, one up, one down. Most mixers at that time had pan pots and most studios were more than the four channel tape machines as I was using.

[WRGKMC]

Pan pots are just pots or mixer channels applied to a specific application. They date back much farther than the application of course.

Pan pots became popular after stereo and multitracking became a norm in the 60s but when you really study it,

a stereo track is no more than two mono tracks combined. If I were to guess who actually installed one, my guess would be Les Paul

or someone short after who found it easire to twist one knob instead of two.

 

You can pan two mono trackes in a stereo field using two volume knobs by simply turning one gain up as you turn the other down.

Thats panning and theres no big mystery about that. Someone eventually found they could use a ganged pots and have one knob do the job of two

required previously for the same trick. Before that simple routing switches were commone in the crossover between mono and stereo.

 

It was all about adapting what equipment they had in a studio to get results and keep up with the competition.

If they discovered a pan pot would be a better solution than switches, the engineer would get out a soldering iron and wire one in.

You see in those days, engineers were actual "engineers" who understood electronics and designed their own boards and built them from scratch.

Wiring in a dual pot was kindergarden stuff to them. In a way, even a mono mixer can be considered a pan pot. You simply bring one mic level up as you turn another down.

[144dB]

Thanks guys...

 

When I was looking it up on the web, I discovered that Disney was one of the first to pursue panning as we know it today, to create the effect of sound moving from one side of the screen to the other (for Fantasia). But that was the 1930's, and I know that stereo (and particularly pan pots) came much later than that for pop/rock music.

 

I'm reading Bobby Owsinski's book about Mastering, and in the interview section, it's clear that some of the greats still design their own equipment. They are so focused on a clean, short, high-quality signal path that they design and build their own mastering consoles, etc.

 

Pretty amazing...

[WRGKMC]

 

Thanks guys... When I was looking it up on the web, I discovered that Disney was one of the first to pursue panning as we know it today, to create the effect of sound moving from one side of the screen to the other (for Fantasia ). But that was the 1930's, and I know that stereo (and particularly pan pots) came much later than that for pop/rock music. I'm reading Bobby Owsinski's book about Mastering , and in the interview section, it's clear that some of the greats still design their own equipment. They are so focused on a clean, short, high-quality signal path that they design and build their own mastering consoles, etc. Pretty amazing...

 

 

Disney was an innovator for sure. Film audio is different than regular audio for sure.

magnetic tape wasnt even invented yet so I'm sure what he may have used was an

earley version of a stereo track on film. The audio track is a visual photographic burn

on the film which is quite interesting in itself.

I'm sure audio panning was used with the film but its not the same thing as

most associate to a pan pot used today.

 

It was likely done with two mono recorders and special optical recording heads in the camera.

They could spend the time and money to do that kind of thing with an animated film.

But you still have a playback system issue that just didnt exist in 99.9% of the theaters then.

 

Stereo films like that were considered an amusement at Disney World and the cost to make it was recouped by the audiences

who visited there. But honestly, until recording with tape became possible (a takeoff on wire recording) and multiple heads

there was no stereo audio tracks worth mentioning. There were some earley Stereo record cutting attempts being done but

it wasnt something that worked very well nor practical to manufacture.

[MikeRivers]

The oldest issue of RE/P magazine I can put my hands on easily here is from 1975 and all the consoles in the ads have pan pots. My Ampex MX-10 is from around 1960 and it has Ch A - Both - Ch B switches.

 

It's hard to date the first use because it was probably something built in a studio. It was around 1968, I guess, when a few commercial recording consoles started to appear (of course there were broadcast consoles before that, many of which were converted for recording). Perhaps a better thing to research is what was considered the first commercial studio recording console. That's probably a good starting point for the common use of pan pots.