My Mackie 1640 (original) died yesterd. : I need to replace it, opinions wanted.

[UstadKhanAli]

But that is exactly the wrong way to judge anything. Anybody can produce a terrible mix on any gear. The question is really, if everything else is done at least reasonably right , what differences are inherent in gear? Otherwise you're not really comparing the gear, you're comparing people's ability to screw up a mix, which is endless.

 

That's right. I believe, if I try hard enough, I could turn in a {censored}ty mix on any equipment.

 

Or a great sounding mix on any equipment.

 

'Course, the second takes a bit more work.

[Lee Flier]

 

I think the panning issue is only part of it, as we are also listening to the general sense of depth and dimensionality as well as how *wiiiiiide* the sound field seems to be. At least, that's what I'm talking about. So I don't know how much of this has to do with summing (probably quite a bit) and how much of it has to do with A/D and D/A conversion (possibly a bit)....if that makes any sense in relation to what you're saying. Regardless, that link you provided is a fascinating read, and may play in to this in part.

 

 

I don't know if you have Pro Tools 9 yet, but apparently you can finally change the pan law in PT. This does make a difference and you should try it if you can... Reaper has had that ability for quite some time. It does make a difference in both the "width" and the "depth" which you may or may not prefer over the default. You can only do this on a new session - I don't think you can import an existing session and change the pan law, which you wouldn't want to do anyway because it will change your mix levels.

 

Panning IS actually a form of summing, because the left and right channels of each track are summed together to create the panned signal (unless something is panned hard left or right). And different DAWs, like different analog consoles, achieve panning in different ways, so it can be interesting to compare them if you like to geek out from time to time.

[UstadKhanAli]

I do have PT9, so I will look and see where I can find the pan law and see what that's about, thanks. Do you have a preference in these adjustments, and if so, why?

[Lee Flier]

Well, I usually leave mine set to -3, which is what most of the analog consoles I like use. SSL is at -4.5, and that sounds good for some stuff too although you have to be more careful about how it sounds in mono. I believe -3 is also now the default if you use the surround mixer plugin in PT9, which is what you have to use in order to change the pan law.

 

In a nutshell, a pan law of 0 means that each channel is attenuated by the full 6dB when you place something in the center (you always gain 6dB when you double the signal). This is fine if you want to do mono mixes without changing any levels, because something panned left or right will always be at exactly the same level when you pan it to center and vice versa. In practice, though, you don't normally want to be at 0 because there's a certain amount of reflection between the left and right speakers, so most consoles and DAWs don't do this. PT 8 and earlier defaulted to a -2.5 pan law, and you couldn't change that. Basically that means that instead of losing all 6dB when you pan to center, you only lose 3.5. At -3dB you will lose 3, and so forth.

 

What this does is it gives you a little improvement in the front-to-back depth as you pan. If you try setting to -4.5 you can really hear it - if you sweep a pan from left to right, you'll hear it get louder as it gets to the center, which is more what your ears would expect. Not so much difference between -2.5 and -3, but added up over a lot of tracks it does make a difference. Sure, in theory if you're just setting your panning on mono channels and leaving it there, you can accomplish the same thing with faders. But it does make a difference particularly with stereo tracks and stereo effects. Reverb and delay sound a bit more spacious, for instance.