Panning changes after Bounce In Place

[JPw]

Hi there! Does anyone else experience the same problem in Logic with changes to panning after bouncing in place? For example, if a part is panned slightly L or R (in stereo pan), when bouncing in place, the panning changes dramatically, pushing it much further to the side. It should stay exactly the same right? Is this a bug or does bip not recognise stereo panning vs balance?

It's really important for the panning to stay exactly as is, obviously. When running up against CPU constraints, it's one of the quickest ways to reduce load, but if it changes the panning, then it's completely unusable.

If anyone has noticed the same thing, or could provide a settings fix that would be fab! Cheers!  

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[des99]

Hi JPw - can you please edit the post title with something that gives a clue to people what your question is about? That will help you get more help with your question.

Thanks!

[JPw]

Hi des99, sorry about that! First post haha... Put my name in the title instead!

Hope someone has an answer

[des99]

Thanks - no problem!

What are your bounce in place settings that you are using?

[JPw]

here's a screenshot;

[David Nahmani]

2 hours ago, JPw said:

It should stay exactly the same right?

Definitely. 

My guess is, you're bouncing a region in place including the panning (Include Volume/Pan Automation), which means the panning is reapplied a second time upon playback. 

You need to either NOT include the panning in your BIP, or bring the bounced file onto a track that is panned in the center. 

[des99]

If you BIP when you've panned your signal to one side, the new track should be panned centrally to maintain that exact position. If you *also* pan the new track, you're panning twice, so to speak, so the results will sound different.

Edit: Ah, David won the quickdraw...

Edited July 28, 2022 by des99

[JPw]

1 hour ago, David Nahmani said:

My guess is, you're bouncing a region in place including the panning (Include Volume/Pan Automation), which means the panning is reapplied a second time upon playback. 

Yeah that was my thinking too! des99 is right, the track is panned centrally automatically after bip and the problem's still there if you don't even touch it. Seems super weird to have to not include the pan/volume automation as the only fix? 

Have you guys experienced the same issue ever with doing a bip in stereo pan? I'm not sure if the problem is there if working with panning set to balance...

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[des99]

5 minutes ago, JPw said:

the track is panned centrally automatically after bip and the problem's still there if you don't even touch it.

So you pan a track, BIP it, the new track is panned centrally thus reflecting the bounced file without changes, and it's routed the same as the previous track, and still sounds different?

[David Nahmani]

21 minutes ago, JPw said:

the track is panned centrally automatically after bip

Not if you're bouncing a region, which is what your screenshot shows. 

[JPw]

42 minutes ago, des99 said:

So you pan a track, BIP it, the new track is panned centrally thus reflecting the bounced file without changes, and it's routed the same as the previous track, and still sounds different?

Yep spot on. 

To be super clear as an example; my violin track is panned -20 left, I then BIP the region. That BIP is then on automically centred new track with exactly the same routing, sends etc, but sounds like it's now panned at least -45 to -60.  It's like logic is adding pan during the bip process.

26 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

Not if you're bouncing a region, which is what your screenshot shows. 

Yes if you BIP a region it is (at least on my system) automatically panned into the centre. It just writes the panning into the bip. But in this case it changes the panning.

 

It's been doing this for years for me even with updates and fresh installs, I've just been ignoring it but it's been grating a bit lately when I run up against CPU constraints!

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[des99]

5 minutes ago, JPw said:

To be super clear as an example; my violin track is panned -20 left, I then BIP the region. That BIP is then on atomically centred new track with exactly the same routing, sends etc, but sounds like it's now panned at least -45 to -60.  It's like logic is adding pan during the bip process.

Ok thanks, I'll try to replicate and see what happens.

Note that if sends are involved, the panning will now be pre-send (as it's coming from the source audio), rather than post-send (where it was coming from the pan control) so the signal sent via sends will be different - check whether this is not where your differences are coming from.

(ie Try an example without sends at all and see whether it sounds correct for you.)

Note - almost always when I'm BIP it's to preserve/render the original content, *not* the mix positions, because I want to continue to mix freely, so I would be unchecking volume/pan automation etc by default, so the bounce doesn't really burn in the mix settings - I don't find that is particularly useful for me in most situations. (Of course, occasionally it is what you need to do...)

Edited July 28, 2022 by des99

[JPw]

Just did a quick test, and if you BIP while the pan is set to balance, then it sounds exactly the same as it does when you BIP but it's set to stereo, if that makes sense? So it seems that Logic will auto change stereo pan to balance pan during the BIP process?

Yeah you're right, just unchecking pan/volume would do the trick. I just like BIP for further warping and also using it to condense multiple similar parts down. But I guess the alternative is just send them to a bus then set an audio track with that bus as an input to record them.

Not the end of the world generally, but it seems to be an oversight if it's something that other people also come across.

Thanks both, des99 do let me know if you have a similar experience! 

[David Nahmani]

30 minutes ago, JPw said:

Yes if you BIP a region it is (at least on my system) automatically panned into the centre.

Not here. If I BIP a region, I have a choice to either include the panning or not (with the "Include Pan/Volume automation" checkbox), but the Pan knob on the track doesn't change position - which makes sense because there may be other regions on the track that I haven't BIP'ed. So if I include the pan (as you did on the screenshot you shared here) and the Pan knob is still panning, then you're applying the panning twice, which would result in the exaggerated panning you said you experienced.

Unless you can give us a precise series of steps to reproduce the issue (which type of BIP, which pan position, which BIP settings etc...) then my guess is, that's what you've been experiencing. 

[JPw]

22 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

Unless you can give us a precise series of steps to reproduce the issue (which type of BIP, which pan position, which BIP settings etc...) then my guess is, that's what you've been experiencing. 

I see, sorry David. If you check include pan/volume, the new track is automatically centred. I'm definitely not applying the pan twice, can say that with 100% certainty (that might come back to bite me!!)

29 minutes ago, JPw said:

Just did a quick test, and if you BIP while the pan is set to balance, then it sounds exactly the same as it does when you BIP but it's set to stereo, if that makes sense? So it seems that Logic will auto change stereo pan to balance pan during the BIP process?

This seems to be the issue. To recreate the issue, just stereo pan your track left of right (the issue becomes more exaggerated the further you go), then BIP with "include pan/volume" checked. I think though not certain it auto switches the stereo pan to balance resulting in the exaggeration. 

As des99 says, I could just uncheck that, but I do like using BIP sometimes as a way of condensing layers or for further warping

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[JPw]

52 minutes ago, des99 said:

Note that if sends are involved, the panning will now be pre-send (as it's coming from the source audio), rather than post-send (where it was coming from the pan control) so the signal sent via sends will be different - check whether this is not where your differences are coming from.

Sorry, meant to say I gave it a go after you mentioned it without any sends whatsoever, so that's not the issue although good thought for sure

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[David Nahmani]

1 hour ago, JPw said:

If you check include pan/volume, the new track is automatically centred.

I'm still not sure what you're doing: bouncing regions? tracks? If it's regions, then the new track is not automatically centered. If it's tracks, then the screenshot you shared doesn't match what you're describing. 

I'm not seeing any issues with any of the panning with BIP here. In Logic Pro, there are many different behaviors that can be produced by combinations or many different actions along with many different settings, and admittedly, it's easy enough to get confused. Without very precise steps to reproduce a specific issue (along with screenshots to match the descriptions), it isn't possible for us to tell whether what you're experiencing is pilot error, or a bug - but once again, there's no known bug in this area so until you provide the precise series of steps to reproduce your issue, I'm leaning toward pilot error.

Precise steps means letting us know exactly what audio region format, what input format on the channel strip, what format plug-ins (if any), what you're selecting, what menu function you're choosing, what you're clicking, screenshots that match your description - and ideally a Logic project file that we can use to reproduce exactly what you're experiencing by following your series of steps to reproduce. 

[JPw]

Not sure if this works on here, but here's a screen-rec of the process;

Screen-grab of process

It's just a right click region-bounce in place, not sure what else I can tell you. It happens not just with Kontakt. Could well be pilot error, but des99 seems to understand the problem I believe?

Thanks

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[JakobP]

Played around with this a little in 10.5.1, and ran into  buggy behavior when switching between Stereo Pan and Balance. Changing a track to SP and panning it, then switching to Balance, then back again to SP, and the panning has been increased a lot (looking at the meters, not the pan knob). This obviously makes it hard to test things out...

Edited July 28, 2022 by JakobP

[David Nahmani]

3 minutes ago, JPw said:

It's just a right click region-bounce in place, not sure what else I can tell you.

Ok so you see, one thing that wasn't clear until now is that you are bouncing to a new track. If you chose to bounce to the same track then the behavior would not be the same. 

So now what I see on your screen grab is that you have a track panned to the left and you're doing a BIP including the pan and that as a result you have the panning included in the BIP'ed file. I don't see anything wrong with that. Do you see a difference in the metering between the original and the new BIP'ed track? 

[JPw]

1 hour ago, David Nahmani said:

Ok so you see, one thing that wasn't clear until now is that you are bouncing to a new track. If you chose to bounce to the same track then the behavior would not be the same. 

I thought that was clear from my original screenshot because it says New Track as destination. 

Yeah metering agrees with my ears that the panning is exaggerated.

1 hour ago, JakobP said:

Played around with this a little in 10.5.1, and ran into  buggy behavior when switching between Stereo Pan and Balance.

Hi! Interesting... I'm not switching repeatedly at all, just once to switch from the default of balance to stereo. But wonder if it's along the same vein? I'm using the latest version 10.7.4

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[JakobP]

You could try this simple test; Drag in an apple loop to the tracks area and cycle it, change to stereo pan and pan it a bit so you see the meters follow. Then switch to Balance, and then back again, see any change ?

[David Nahmani]

17 minutes ago, JPw said:

Yeah metering agrees with my ears that the panning is exaggerated.

Can you save a copy of the project and attach it here? I'll give it a try. 

[JPw]

1 hour ago, JakobP said:

You could try this simple test; Drag in an apple loop to the tracks area and cycle it, change to stereo pan and pan it a bit so you see the meters follow. Then switch to Balance, and then back again, see any change ?

Yeah metering changes but that's to be expected. The problem is non-user changes when doing a BIP.

Pan Test.zip

58 minutes ago, David Nahmani said:

Can you save a copy of the project and attach it here? I'll give it a try. 

Here you go David. I've removed all 3rd party plugins and using just an electric piano apple loop. Wondering if you'll have the same issue!

EDIT: Says that file is unavailable so try this if it's not working: Pan test

Edited July 28, 2022 by JPw

[JakobP]

Tried your project and added a gain plugin to use to nulltest, took a screenshot before and after doing the switch back and forth between stereo pan and balance: Clearly buggy behavior...

Edited July 28, 2022 by JakobP

[JPw]

11 hours ago, JakobP said:

Tried your project and added a gain plugin to use to nulltest, took a screenshot before and after doing the switch back and forth between stereo pan and balance: Clearly buggy behavior...

Have we found a Logic bug?! Reckon Apple could get us a free M2 for our efforts.......? 😆

I'd be interested if anyone else generally experiences this problem? After some tests, I think the conclusion is Logic auto switches Stereo pan to balance during a BIP with panning/volume automation checked. Although happy to be proven wrong!

It's not the biggest deal for sure, but if you want to condense panned layers for instance it's not really usable as is

[JakobP]

2 hours ago, JPw said:

I think the conclusion is Logic auto switches Stereo pan to balance during a BIP with panning/volume automation checked.

I'd say it's worse than that, the BIP doesn't null with the original SP:d track unless you do "the back and forth switch" to get this exaggerated panning. It doesn't null with the SP:d BIP with the original track in "Balance mode" either... And as soon you move the SP knob after the "switch", the "overpanning" goes away until you switch next time and so on... If you solo and use "Bounce Project..." instead, it "sort of" works, i.e. the bounce is a result of how the initial Stereo Panning sound...

Confusing post I know