I am new to Cubase from Reaper and Logic, and panning in Cubase is ridiculously complicated. There seem to be several types. I am trying to find information and get some straight answers and it is impossible. I even tried CTRL-F in the manual for terms like “linked panner” “standard panner” etc and those topics are not in the manual. They aren’t even in the index or TOC.
Is there anywhere I can find documentation on panning?
All I want to do is pan a group track, which is stereo, that has 2 mono tracks routed into it. I’ve tried every pan option on the stereo group track and it refuses to route. Same w/ the mono tracks.
If I sound frustrated, its because I am. How can these unique terms like “linked panning” not be in the manual that is over 1,000 pages? I’ve googled this and the results are for everything but what I’m trying to do.
I’ll try to answer it bit it might be a bit technical.
Also I would not know why panning should be more complicated in Cubase than in other DAWs. They should all pretty much do the same thing.
Case 1 - routing a mono track to a stereo track, panning is done on the mono track
Panning is a distribution of power. You have audio on a mono track. 0.0dBFS there would be 100% power of the audio signal.
If you distribute 100% power of the mono track (one channel) towards a stereo track (two channels) you would steer how much of the power should go to either of the two destination channels.
If panning is set to Center, 50% power goes to the left channel and 50% to the right.
My input signal (green track) is mono and has 0.0dBFS. Cubase, however, will always show the channel in reagrds to where it is routed to. In this case it is to a stereo group and therefore the signal is already shown as two channels, each with -6.0dBFS, because 50% change of power equals 6dB.
BUT - this behavior is also influenced by the setting in the Project Setup → Stereo Pan Law. In this example it is set to -6dB, thus each channel is shown with -6dB because: -6dB + -6dB = 0dB
Cubase allows this Pan Law setting as a tribute to old analog mixing consoles. Different consoles had different power distribution behavior and people who are familiar with working with such consoles might want to have Cubase replicate the same behavior.
If we pan our signal hard to either side, in this example left, 100% of the signal’s power will be now routed to the left channel, increasing it’s dB reading by 6dB.
Case 2a - routing a stereo track to a stereo track, using the Stereo Balance Panner
In this case you are technically not panning but balancing the signal. That is when you move the balance pan slider to a side you turn down the volume of the other side.
So it is the same as if you would have two faders on the channel, one for left and one for right. If you would turn down the right volume fader all the way it would be the same as moving the balance pan slider fully to the left.
The Pan Law from the Project Setup has no effect on this at all.
Case 2b - routing a stereo track to a stereo track, using the Stereo Combined Panner
With this panner you distribute power again, similiar to case 1. It will give you two sliders, one for the left input and one for the right input to the track, and let you chose how much of the resp. power is supposed to be routed to the left and right channel of the destination track.
If we send 0dbFS from the left channel to the left channel and 0dbFS from the right channel to the left channel, we will end up with +6dBFS on the left side of the destination. However, Cubase will display this result also in our source channel, as the peak meter will always show the signal how it will arrive at the destination.
Again the Pan Law from the Project Setup has no effect on this at all.
Thank you for that. I do appreciate it. I did find that. It didn’t work. That’s why I started digging into all the other types. Thinking maybe it was b/c I had tracks routed to a stereo group track. Nothing is working.
This is such a great write up an explanation and you put some time into it and I appreciate that. The reason I said its complicated is b/c I do see the pan control at the top of the fader and tried it. But it wasn’t panning anything. Not on my 2 mono tracks, and not on the stereo group track that I have the 2 mono tracks routed to. So I started digging into the automation lanes in the stereo group track and found 2 entries for standard panning, and also linked panning. That’s where my comment about it being complicated came from.
My apologies for my frustration and thank you for taking such care to explain. I don’t know why panning would not work out of the box. As you said, it is the simplest and most basic of features.
Turns out I’m an idiot. I had several nested group audio tracks summing submixes and eventually treeing up to a final sub mix. That final submix track in the chain was in mono. Nothing complicated about the panning in cubase. It was me creating a complicated project in a DAW that I’m not used to yet.
That said, some entries in the manual about Linked Panning, Standard Panning Left/Right, and Standard Panning Left/Right 2 showing in the automation menu would be helpful.
The link @mlib provided above is the page in the manual with that information, EXCEPT that the names are actually “stereo balance panner” and “stereo combined panner”, not linked and standard panning. That is one of the challenging things about finding your way around Cubase when different names get used in different places (and often the names aren’t intuitive in the first place to know what to search for if you don’t happen to know what Cubase calls things, especially in cases where most other DAWs use another term, typically that originated in hardware console days, with the classic example being Cubase’s FX tracks and group tracks compared to most other DAWs’ using auxes and buses). I also remember being confused, and having to do a bunch of searching, the first time I was wanting to automate panning when using the stereo combined panner.
Very confusing! I was very frustrated but its normal for me to freak out over stuff like that. Cubase is definitely a few steps up from my former DAW. I’m loving it so far!
