Stereo Pan: swap left and right

1. Control + click the Pan knob and choose Stereo Pan.

   

2. Command + click the new Stereo Pan knob to swap left and right channels!
   

Command-click the new Stereo Pan knob to swap left and right channels!

 

stereo-pan.pngswapped left and right.png

From the picture, I don't see a difference apart from the color.. but I do get that its supposed to swap the R and L around. What's an example of a real life application of this?

You can also use Gain insert plugin. (Utility -> Gain)

You can also use Gain insert plugin. (Utility -> Gain)

Yes, that LR swap was always there in the Gain plug-in, but now there's no need to use a plug-in for that, it's even simpler!

Also, a plugin can only swap the signal coming in to the pan knob, it doesn't swap the panning itself

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Wether you use the plug-in or the pan knob, you're swapping the left and right signals — it's the same result.

What's an example of a real life application of this?

Here is one: The pianos are sampled widely across the panoramic field. IOW, higher notes originate farther to the right, lower notes farther to the left, which simulates a pianist sitting at the keyboard. Swap that, and it simulates what a listener might hear instead. In either case, right hand melody with left hand comping is then wide.

I put left and right hands on separate tracks to keep it even wider and allow separate processing. If you are tracking one piano as a lead, right hand instrument and another as a left hand comp, even panned farther left, sometimes it works better if you swap the stereo image on the left-hand comp piano, which puts the higher notes even farther left. Also, you may have a melodic/percussive element that works better panned a bit to the right. If you also have a piano playing in octave 3 or so, swapping the stereo field will keep the piano wide without having to pan it very far left, and those octave 3-4 notes will get out of the way of the panned-right element.

Here is one: The pianos are sampled widely across the panoramic field. IOW, higher notes originate farther to the right, lower notes farther to the left, which simulates a pianist sitting at the keyboard. Swap that, and it simulates what a listener might hear instead. In either case, right hand melody with left hand comping is then wide.

Yes! Another one is a drum kit: by switching the stereo on the overhead mic, you're switching the perspective between the drummer and the audience.

But there could be ton of other real life applications. Another example would be a stereo sound FX sample that starts on the left and slowly pan to the right. Want it to start on the right and slowly pan to the left? Swap Left and Right.

Another example: to make a special effect where the stereo appears wider than the triangle defined by the position of your monitors, you can swap LR, invert the phase and mix with the original stereo signal.

On 11/9/2018 at 10:50 AM, David Nahmani said:

yevt said:

You can also use Gain insert plugin. (Utility -> Gain)

Yes, that LR swap was always there in the Gain plug-in, but now there's no need to use a plug-in for that, it's even simpler!

Cool tip! I had my X-Y mics assigned to the wrong channels and wanted a way to fix it.

Just a tip for the community. Cmd-Click didn't work for me out of the gate. I first had to Control-Click and change the knob type to Stereo Pan. Then Cmd-Click changed it to orange and presumably has flipped L-R.

Incidentally, is there any good reason why Logic defaults to "Balance"? From what I read here:

https://whylogicprorules.com/true-stereo-panning/

the way Balance works on a stereo track is not musical, but the Stereo Pan is. Just because you want the left and right sides of a choir to be distinct, for example, doesn't mean you might not want to place the entire choir left of center. I've been assuming Logic knew how to handle a stereo track properly, but I was missing this.

Why doesn't Logic default stereo tracks to Stereo Pan?

@Dave K Thank you for revisiting this older thread! I've edited my original post to add your precision, hoping this will make the tip more obvious to others in the future. 🙂 

1 hour ago, Dave K said:

is there any good reason why Logic defaults to "Balance"?

It's just the way Logic was conceived, not good reason really. That must have been the easiest/quickest/most-logical way they found to implement a panning solution back when they added the capability to deal with stereo channels, until enough people complained that they preferred the way Pro Tools dealt with them. 

46 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

Thank you for revisiting this older thread!

It drives me crazy that Apple closes older threads, especially when they clearly have not answered the OP. Forcing people to open new threads guarantees that there are thousands of useless, duplicate threads out there to sift through when hunting for answers 🙂

Thanks again for your forum! It's great!

On 11/15/2018 at 8:33 AM, David Nahmani said:

you're switching the perspective between the drummer and the audience

To be honest, this doesn't make any difference, even though I see this same argument everywhere. 

1) When people listen to music, they are not "seeing" the musicians and they are not envisioning the drummer in front of them. I think this is more of a "technical" thing that people who work with music tend to discuss, but to the average listener (and even people such as myself) it's not something we are paying attention to. 

2) Even if you pay attention to this, when you listen to a song do you know if the drummer is left handed? 😉 So if the mix is set to have the toms left to right instead of right to left, is it the right handed drummer's perspective? Is it the audience's perspective of a left handed drummer? I can see how a piano is different, but again, people experience the music as a whole and I guess that these details are irrelevant as they won't bring more excitement to the song. Maybe the pianist is playing with their back to the audience? Who knows? haha

What if the drummer or pianist is playing sideways? Will the sound be mono and some pieces of the drum kit or some notes on the piano sound louder than others...?

2 minutes ago, Tiago Rocha said:

Maybe the pianist is playing with their back to the audience?

I did my first grand piano recording recently and read up on pro techniques for how to mic it. I'm not sure how universal it is, but someone said it's typical to put the treble strings on the left. As a life-long pianist, that seems absurd. I expect to hear them towards the right. 🙂

4 minutes ago, Dave K said:

I did my first grand piano recording recently and read up on pro techniques for how to mic it. I'm not sure how universal it is, but someone said it's typical to put the treble strings on the left. As a life-long pianist, that seems absurd. I expect to hear them towards the right.

Often, in classical concerts, the piano is side on to the audience, so the whole thing should be coming from one position on the stage (depending on where the piano is situated) in audience perspective. 🙂

At the end of the day - it's your music, put things where you want.

I tend to go from drummer perspective, as far as drums go...

Again, I think this is always more of a "mixing engineer" decision, than it is something that anyone will ever pay attention to. I mean, if a song is just piano, for example, having the piano be spread across the stereo field, now that is a decision that in my opinion gives it a bit more depth, but if it's left to right or right to left, no one really cares about it, other than the mixing engineer, the artist, and maybe some music geeks like ourselves hahaha

Because as I said, how do we know if the drummer is left handed or right handed? Is he/she playing facing the audience or with their back to the audience? Are they one of those crazy musicians that have a platform and play upside down? We will never know. And at the end of the day, it doesn't make any difference.

I always mix the drums left to right, just because I'm a drummer and it's easier for me to understand where each thing is, even each channel strip, the panning, etc. The same for you @Dave K as a pianist. You're mixing the song and when you hear the piano you see yourself playing it, even if you didn't actually record it yourself. At least that's how I would approach mixing drums for other people (which I don't)

How are you mixing this?

On 2/27/2024 at 9:01 AM, Dave K said:

I did my first grand piano recording recently and read up on pro techniques for how to mic it. I'm not sure how universal it is, but someone said it's typical to put the treble strings on the left. As a life-long pianist, that seems absurd. I expect to hear them towards the right. 🙂

Maybe just swap the outputs L&R so it sounds as you expect?

On 2/27/2024 at 12:01 AM, Dave K said:

someone said it's typical to put the treble strings on the left.

That would be wrong. Pull up any software instrument piano and play some notes, or go to YouTube and listen to any piano sonata. Low notes are on the left, high notes on the right.