A standard pan control only controls the volume between the left and right channels. But there’s a lot more we can do to add more of the real life depth to our mixes than only by changing the volume of both channels.
One of the tricks: use EQ to create a difference in frequency response between the left and right channels. You might also use delay applied differently to both channels. But be careful with delay since it can easily kill your mix to be mono compatible because of the introduced phasing.
To make a long story short: by applying different techniques than normal volume differences we can create a more Binaural sound. A sound which sounds more real and which has more depth to it.
I’ve created a Reason Combinator to demonstrate this, using EQ for controlling the sound placement in stereo. Download the patch here:
Binaural Panner (v3) (2.2 KiB, 2,786 hits)
Additional notes: I must say, this Combinator was a little tricky to create. I had some trouble finding a way to make the pan control operate like a bipolar control. Then Reason user avasopht pointed me to a Haas effect patch he had created. In that patch I found a trick I needed for my patch: the pitch bend control of the Reason Thor synth sends both positive and negative CV values. But then I found out that, thanks to Navi Retlav (see comments), “Reason always resets the pitch bend position on song loading”. Finally I found out that by using 2 CV’s in combination with a Button in Thor I could change the values in Thor’s programmer using one pot on the Combinator.
2 Comments
Using thor’s PB is a bad idea. Reason always resets the PB position on song loading, so it gives you a bug in your combinator.
If you want to have the bipolar cv out you can just use thor mod matrix amount cell linked to combinator knob. As cv source you can use button1 in thor for static value or lfo2 with noise for random.
Also if you really want to use PB for some reason, connect any thor lfo2 to combinator knob cv in with minimal amount. Thanks to that lfo will force the combinator to update PB position even if the lfo value is less than 1. I used that trick a few times in my ReFills.
Thanks for the great tips! I’ve updated the patch to version v2 using a Button of Thor for sending the CV and changing the value of the CV using the Combinator’s programmer + pot.
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