Best panning plugin?

I haven’t found a plug-in to do panning effectively. I tried the rKR panner, which is in beta, but this plug just outputs noise - totally broken and should be removed from beta.

The other option I’ve seen is the Auto Panner:

But this uses Hz, not BPM, so I can’t get it to sync, and sometimes with extremely panned material, it doesn’t seem to work. Possibly if the width is set to 80%, not only does it only pan things less wide, but I think it ignores material that is already panned outside that 80%. Just a hunch, but it’s unpredictable for me.

Other than setting up a complex tempo synced LFO to modulate pan, what options are there?

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On the plugin site, filtering for “spatial” there are 4 results you may want to try

Btw cannot find rkr pan

Otoh I could not figure how to tie a LFO to the host tempo using CV. Maybe some synth plugin?

yeah, I used that filter, and there are no good panners out yet I guess.
Well not with the feature I want, which is BPM sync.

Ping pong does a fade thing, which isn’t the same as panning. Auto Panner I’ve used, but no BPM sync, and unpredictable results, which I may just have to live with, as it’s closest. The others are not really panners.

In terms of CV, instead of using an actual LFO, I usually set up a midi sequencer which can output CV, and then slew rate limiter, which modulates the pan of some other plug-in, like a mixer. I sync to midi, or use a button to ‘reset’ the sequencer manually, and set the BPM manually.

regarding the ping-pong pan, I’m using it in a couple different ways, and I haven’t thought about it before, but you’re totally right, it’s clear it’s doing a fade thing on each channel. I guess my question is how would an actual pan sound any different? I guess if you’re sending a mono signal into it it would be different, but with an already stereo (or dual-mono) signal, wouldn’t it sound identical to a true pan? I’m curious about this as I’m wondering if I’d get better results (on my mono signal particularly) from a different panning method…

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Unfortunately there isn’t a great panning plug-in available. Seems like a simple plug-in the Mod team should include, as a basic option for everyone’s tool kit.

The Mod-mixer pans.
Litterally just put your sound source in, and set an LFO to Pan, attenuate to your liking?
In terms of BPM sync - you would have to explain what you mean. I haven’t had much experience trying to clock LFO to the internal clock or following midi clock. But it seems reasonable to try that approach.

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BPM sync, like the panning matches the tempo of the music. Rhythmic panning, at the same speed as the music, instead of at some other random speed.

Holà,
Sorry for the late reply, for panning I use a Stereo X-Fade, it could be synced to the Mod’s BPM with a AMS LFO2 - Freq. If you can send a CV between -5v and 5v it could be perfect !
Didn’t test the LFO, does it work ?

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I’m not sure how I can take a mono signal, then use the crossfader to auto-pan?
It’s meant to fade two stereo signals with each other right?
I’m going to play with it to see what it can do.

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Hi,
Here is the thing :

There are 2 modes :

  • automatic and random pan, synced with the tempo
  • pan with a button (or midi expression pedal)
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That’s really clever - I hadn’t figured to put the signal to A-Left and B-Right. That’s the part I was missing.

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Hi @Rom I wasn’t able to get your pedalboard morphed into what I was looking for. The panning also seemed erratic.

So I set out to make a panner, with a few goals.

  1. It had to be something I could reset with a footpedal. So no random frequency or bpm sync.
  2. I want the panning to start from the left and go to right and back again.

This was not easy, and perhaps I’m missing something.

Control to CV is where my footpedal can trigger stuff. It also triggers a delay plug-in. This resets the LFO, however the LFO will always go from zero to +5 then back to zero and then -5. IF I connected this directly to a panner, or anything, resetting would put the LFO into the middle of it’s cycle.

So I switch the signal to only be positive, and boost that so it’s basically going from 0 to 10. When I reset with my pedal, it goes back to zero.

Now I have a CV signal I can set to anything and know that a reset will be the minimum value.

I sure wish there were easier ways to do this - like an LFO that was switchable to positive only, and could go to +10 instead of just +5.

I use Midi sequencers sometimes for LFO type functions, but the panic (reset) buttons on those don’t take CV. I can’t seem to map one midi input to more than one destination, so I map it to CV because that is something you can map to multiple destinations - just not retriggering a midi sequencer.

I hope this example helps others.
I also hope to find better ways to do this stuff.

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