Extreme panning in club music?

Why is it done? I have heard it on hi-hats in two tracks i listened to lately out of interest.
one was something by andreas kremer and one a liebing mix of a sven väth track.
in both the hihats were panned to one side completely.

while this might open up space by mixing and prolly translates to mono on a club rig i still don't hear it in very many tracks and it reminds me of what was done in the beatles' days for example. it sounds shit when listening at home for sure, at least to me.

anyone care to tell me more about this, possibly naming other examples?

i like these type of drastic pannig effects... once there is something to balance it with on the other side..

especially when the tracks changes from one pan setting to another, it can create some weird effects on the brain.... one i can think of is that breakbeat track on Luke SLater's Freek Funk... dont know the name, but it jumps out when ever it does it.

righto. the problem is there ain't anything on the other side most of the time if at all in the tracks i mentioned. at least not in that frequency region... ?

Bad practice if there`s no balance.
Totally pointless for most club soundsystems.

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Originally Posted by dirty_bass

Bad practice if there`s no balance.
Totally pointless for most club soundsystems.

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i must re-listen then, maybe there was some kind of balance after all. just wanted to learn about the effect on a clubsystem.

thanks for clearing this up! didn't make any sense to me so i asked.

I've never heard of any club running a stereo PA ever.

Which makes stereo effects nice for home listeners, but pointless on a rig.

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Originally Posted by Jay Pace

I've never heard of any club running a stereo PA ever.

Which makes stereo effects nice for home listeners, but pointless on a rig.

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We run in stereo at Filth, as far as I'm aware.

One time Dom accidentally wired up the rear speakers the wrong way round and if you stood in the middle of the room it played all kinds of funny tricks on your mind.

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Originally Posted by TechMouse

We run in stereo at Filth, as far as I'm aware.

One time Dom accidentally wired up the rear speakers the wrong way round and if you stood in the middle of the room it played all kinds of funny tricks on your mind.

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Sounds like he had them out of phase. If the speakers are out of phase frequencies get cancelled out and it sounds weird.

Nearly all PA's run in mono to avoid phase issues, and because it makes the most efficient use of amps. You get the most power out of an amp by bridging it - combining the stereo channels of the amp into one output thus massively increasing the power.

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Originally Posted by Jay Pace

Sounds like he had them out of phase. If the speakers are out of phase frequencies get cancelled out and it sounds weird.

Nearly all PA's run in mono to avoid phase issues, and because it makes the most efficient use of amps. You get the most power out of an amp by bridging it - combining the stereo channels of the amp into one output thus massively increasing the power.

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not only that, but to make efective placement of cabinets to get workable stereo in your average club, it`s just too difficult.

The placement of the soundsystem is normally low on the list of priorities in all but the greatest of nightclubs.
Shame really.

But then, I¬m a Rig junkie anyway.

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Originally Posted by Jay Pace

Sounds like he had them out of phase. If the speakers are out of phase frequencies get cancelled out and it sounds weird.

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No, not out of phase... is that even possible with Speakon connectors?

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Originally Posted by dirty_bass

not only that, but to make efective placement of cabinets to get workable stereo in your average club, it`s just too difficult.

The placement of the soundsystem is normally low on the list of priorities in all but the greatest of nightclubs.
Shame really.

But then, I¬m a Rig junkie anyway.

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The main room at BluePrint is roughly rectangular and we bring our own stack.

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Originally Posted by TechMouse

The main room at BluePrint is roughly rectangular and we bring our own stack.

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But why run stereo?
If it`s a permanent set up, I understand it, like brixton academy, as there is time to sort proper placement out, and at least get a reasonable wide angle coverage for the stereo effect (even though the sound at the brixton academy is generally ass)
We used to run 80K superstacks at at raindance, all one array too, still didn`t do stereo though, it leads to so many problems with accoustics etc.

I could be wrong, we might be feeding the same signal to both stacks.

It sounds great, anyway.

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Originally Posted by TechMouse

I could be wrong, we might be feeding the same signal to both stacks.

It sounds great, anyway.

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I was gonna say, you might as well just run mono, and concentrate on getting the crossovers set up just right, and the eq perfect, than dealing with stereo.
You`ll get more efficiency out of the amps too.

i find the best way is to just have the 'trans' effect on the pioneer 600 (dave clarke style) on constantly so the beat just jumps from left to right. cant get more stereo than that

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Originally Posted by dirty_bass

I was gonna say, you might as well just run mono, and concentrate on getting the crossovers set up just right, and the eq perfect, than dealing with stereo.
You`ll get more efficiency out of the amps too.

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I really ought to spend more time learning how it all works to be honest. Dom really knows his stuff, and I should really take advantage of the opportunity to learn.

I was quite sure it's in stereo though, because I think the balance control on the mixer works.

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Originally Posted by TechMouse

I really ought to spend more time learning how it all works to be honest. Dom really knows his stuff, and I should really take advantage of the opportunity to learn.

I was quite sure it's in stereo though, because I think the balance control on the mixer works.

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Probably the balance works on the mixer at the meters, but I bet when it hits the amps it goes mono.

I wouldn`t advise getting into rigs too much mate.
I accidentally got into it years ago, next thing you know I was putting on massive raves, and doing commercial installs.
Very very distracting, and possibly the ultimate audio gear porn.
Plus it means not only do I analyse the music I hear when at a club("man, they really killed the tops when mastering this tune"etc, in my head, but I`m also analysing the sound syste, ("useless twats have got the crossovers all wrong, and like bloody amateurs, it`s all bass and top and no mid")
Nightmare.

So a question on this:

Suppose you've got a track all mixed down and it may as well be in mono because nothing's panned. If I then go and start panning instruments, without adjusting anything else, will it sound exactly the same through a mono system as if I hadn't panned anything?

I assume the answer depends on the panning law involved with your mixer....in which case, what panning law (-3db? -6db?) sums from stereo to mono so that it'd be identical in the above scenario?

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Originally Posted by rounser

So a question on this:

Suppose you've got a track all mixed down and it may as well be in mono because nothing's panned. If I then go and start panning instruments, without adjusting anything else, will it sound exactly the same through a mono system as if I hadn't panned anything?

I assume the answer depends on the panning law involved with your mixer....in which case, what panning law (-3db? -6db?) sums from stereo to mono so that it'd be identical in the above scenario?

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No it won`t sound the same.
When a signal is converted from stereo to mono, the channels are combined.
If they are equal volume in each channel then they will sound the same.
However, if they are panned (essentially the volume in one channel is reduced, then when recombined into mono, you will have a quieter sound, that may disapear in the mix.