Stereo hard panning: Love it or hate it?

Can't Argue With That!

 

I love it. Beatles, Small Faces, Traffic, "Fresh Cream"... the list goes on and on. The first thing that came to mind was VU's "The Gift". I only have the "Peel Slowly..." box set so I can't attest to other, less radical mixes (was WLWH ever released in mono?), but I can't imagine hearing it in anything other than extreme stereo with that filthy backing track all on one side.

Aaron

 

Hard panning sounds unnatural to me.

 

i love it

 

For me it depends on the song and how it is used.

 

On speakers, I quite like it - IF the bass isn't weak that is (and/or the drums for that matter..) but they don't always have to be even if they're just in the one side. For headphones though, I'd usually need the mono version (if there is one and it's available.)

Although I like hard panned jazz on the headphones, it just seems to suit it sometimes IMO. Two of the best examples here are Time Out (Dave Brubeck) and A Tribute To Jack Johnson (Miles Davis.)

One album I love that has a lot of hard panned stuff it The Who Sell Out. I also like The Shadows in wide stereo too. And The Bonzo Dog (Doo Dah) Band. All those I'm more than happy to hear on headphones - and this track uses it to the very best effect I think.

 

I Loved it for the era it was served in. Not Now.

 

I don't like it on any album, aside from "special effects" use such as on The Dark Side of The Moon. This is part of the reason the Beatles In Mono was such a revelation for me--they sound like a band, all in the same space.

 

I love hard panning, as long as there is something in the center. Good stuff!

 

No center channel = me no like.

 

Absolutely love it. The reason being,if your a musician and want to really nail any given part,the isolated hard right and hard left give you the opportunity to hear what was really going on.
The UK first pressing Rubber Soul is probably the best example.
Vocals are so isolated as are the instruments.
There is no question in what they did and how they did it.
Needless to say,if for listening pleasure as a pure aesthetic ,a good mix is the way to go.
Mono mixes are really interesting . I collect a lot of classical pressings from France and Germany which of course are all mono. ( String quartets and quintets )
The point being,depending on what your listening to.
To this day regardless of technology,they still cannot get a good stereo pressing of an orchestra / symphony etc. too much to get a mix when your dealing with over a hundred instruments. The irony of course is the idea of the string sections generally are playing in unison on their given instruments ( fiddles in particular ) ,I'm sure even the concertmaster would agree on that issue and he is a fiddle player.
The other idea comes from the advant grade musique. That would and should really lend itself to hard panning for effect.
In the end when all is said and done,I would think it would depend on the how and why you listen and the genre of music.

 

I was thinking about the people that have had that brain operation where they cut the connection between the hemispheres to help with severe epilepsy. I wonder what it would sound like for them to listen to, say, the Please Please Me album with headphones. It might make them go insane.

 

I've always loved it. I just spun Queen's "A Night At The Opera" the other day, and the stereo bounce on "The Prophet Song" is amazing!

 

As usual, my attitude is, "It is what it is." I've got speakers and headphones that make the best of it.

 

Not keen

 

It depends. Sometimes I don't mind it, sometimes I do. And if I do, it's usually because it sounds unnatural.

 

Don't like it when the instruments come out one speaker and the vocals out the other speaker, but if there are say 2 guitar players and they are each hard panned left and right that can be cool

 

Don't like it that much.
Prefer the bass, kick drum, snare, and lead vocal in the center.
Harmony vocals, tom-toms, guitars and keys can be spread across.
Sounds more natural to me.

 

Some clever person, using audio wizardry, took the recent Beatles Esher demos and spread the stereo to hard left & right....similar to the way George Martin mixed the handful of Esher tracks for Anthology 3. This has become my “go to” version of these tracks. You pan left or right and hear each track in isolation.

In a similar vein, I like the hard panned tracks on the 5.1 mixes on the Imagine box.

 

This!

 

I really depends on what it is.
Some stuff sounds great hard panned, and some stuff sounds awful.

 

L O V E ................. I T!

 

#MeToo

 

I like it, but I think it depends on whether people are speaker or headphone listeners. Music is mixed to listen to through speakers. Headphones introduce an unnatural separation between the channels.