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Completely disagree on LCR. Certain elements. Sure. Everything. Never leave liked it in 25 years of mixing. For example. A drum kit with 4 Tom’s. If you want to pan the Tom’s LCR sound bleh. 🤮

I have to disagree with you on this one. I know a lot of pros who don’t do this, me included.

I don't think you should be fully committed to LCR imo. My toms are 60% L and 75% R and sometimes I'll put a guitar part around 55% to a side depending on how many instruments are playing.

Probably worth mentioning... the listening experience with LCR is better on speakers where the sound from left speaker will also get into the right ear (which is actually stereo). With headphones, it's actually two mono channels to be precise, so it can seem a bit too panned. With headphones you can do something like - hard Left would be actually 80% left, 20% right, so it's bit more glued. That will also depend on the parts played, if we have doubled guitar, there's no problem of LCR at all. Of course, final decision should be made with listening.

And it still sounds good when you check it in mono?

One thing to keep in mind is if you decide to do any M/S processing, LCR panning may complicate that process.

LCR mixes are dull to my ears. Having wide pans is good and all but having no in between pans make it sound empty to me. You need a happy middle ground. LCR some stuff but in between most is my approach.

I typically make three duplicates of guitar tracks and pan each one different degrees of LRC and then pull the fader back on the ones not hard L or R till I fill the listening perspective. I feel we can only process so much info in one part of our perspective. By using all the space we can process more of the sound.

Old desks didn’t have panners, just a switch: LCR.

As someone who primarily does live sound reinforcement, monofest is an unfortunate reality. My church has a long narrow seating arrangement, so snless you are in the front 2 rows stereo sound is completely covered. I'm currently rewiring it for stereo possibilities, not to move any instruments/vocals particularly far from center, but to gain access to stereo choruses, delays, and reverbs either onboard the mixer or from the guitars/keyboards.

You are right and to add on the LCR concept. Make sure to balance the volume after hard pan because things can get weird as you pan hard. This is because volume increases as you pan.

hey Joe, just to thank you for all the tips. Some past videos on EQ helped me soo much that i can't even believe that my voice was soo muddy all this time. We just get used to listen to our own mic and don't really know whats happening. Just taking off that low 80-hz and that whistle and also the 240/250hz boomy areas changed my life.

these videos resonate with me man, its gold

Thank you so much for this! Your message reminded me of a time back in 2009 when I first learned how to pan and heard my song being played on the radio. I couldn't hear my lead guitar that was panned to the left, and I got frustrated. However, one of my mentor producers told me that some playback systems do not have stereo, and I don't have to worry about mixing for those mono kinds of systems. He added that I should be real and make my mix as I want it to be. It is true that many mixers worry about panning totally left or right, but it's not always necessary.

SUCH A GREAT CONCEPT,, THANKS JOE!

Everything sounds so much more alive brother!! Holy...thank you God for this revelation

As always, great information Joe presented in an easy-to-understand to-the-point video. You mentioned toward the end of your video that bass and kick drum always go up the middle. I was thinking that you could do a follow-up video using a song that you produced with multiple instruments and vocals where you demonstrate the preferred location (L, C, or R) of each instrument and vocal in Step 2 (static mix) of your mixing process. This would include explaining why you chose the particular location for each instrument or vocal aside from the fact that your goal is to spread and balance the panning.

Thanks again for all your videos! Especially these days when so many people listen on phone speakers. Anything less sounds mono.

Joe, you are one hilarious geek!