Reference Guide

950 Surround Mixing (Producer and Studio only)
Panning in surround
Figure 281. Medium Surround Panner
The large surround panner has some sliders at the bottom that the medium surround panner doesn’t
have, except for the LFE Send slider, which the medium panner has. Except for the sliders, the large
and medium surround panners have the following controls:
• Angle and Focus marker. A small sphere that you can drag in any direction to both control and
display the following two parameters:
• Angle. This is the perceived angle of the sound source as it differs from the position directly
in front of the listener. The scale is 0 to 180 degrees on the listener’s right, and 0 to -180
degrees on the listener’s left. 0 means the sound is coming from directly in front of the listener,
and plus or minus 180 degrees means that the sound is coming from directly behind the
listener.
• Focus. This is the perceived distance of the sound source from the center of the circle on a
scale of 0 to 100, 0 meaning the center of the circle, and 100 meaning the perimeter.
• Width markers. These are two smaller spheres equidistant from the Angle and Focus marker.
Their distance from each other and from the front of the circle shows the Width value (see
definition below). You can also drag the Width markers to control Angle and Focus.
• Speaker icons/squares. Each surround channel is represented by a speaker icon in the large
panner, and a white square in the small panner. The large panner also has a corresponding
volume level in dB directly in front of each icon. The position of each speaker icon shows you
each speaker’s position in the surround mix. Clicking a speaker icon or square mutes the
corresponding channel, causing the icon or square to become grey. Double-clicking the icon
solos its channel, turning the icon green.
• Angle slider (large panner only). This slider both displays and controls the angle value.
• Focus slider (large panner only). This slider both displays and controls the focus value.
• Width slider (large panner only). This slider both displays and controls the width value. Width
is a measure of how wide an area the sound seems to be coming from on a scale of 0 to 360
degrees. At 0 and 360 degrees, the sound seems to all come from a single speaker. At 180
degrees the sound seems to come from directly opposite sides. The default angle matches the
project’s left and right channel angle. For example, in 5.1 SMPTE/ITU surround, the default width
is 60 degrees.
• Front/Rear Balance slider (large panner only). Abbreviated as FrntRrBl, this slider adjusts
the front and rear balance. Drag it to the left to reduce the level from the front speakers, or drag it
to the right to reduce rear level.
• LFE slider. This slider both displays and controls the level of sound sent to the LFE channel.
• LFE Only button (large panner only). This button mutes all channels except the LFE channel.