Question on Panning & Busses

[musikman1]

Hi Friends,

I have been going through some of my older projects that have been recorded on older versions of Sonar/Cakewalk, and were saved as bun files. They are loading into Bandlab as project files just fine, no issues there.  I wasn't in the habit of using sub busses very often back then, so I've been re-working the routing of the tracks, giving each instrument a color theme, and setting up submixes/busses for each instrument, in an effort to better organize and have more control over the mixes. This has worked out good so far.

So if my project has 4 Acoustic Guitar tracks, I would set each to route to the Acoustic Guitar sub buss I have just added, which in turn routes to the Master output buss.  I'm no expert engineer by any stretch, but after watching a few Cakewalk YT videos, as far as I know, this is the standard basic setup that will get the job done, and certainly more efficiently than the way I used to set up my mix.  I've also begun to move my FX from the main tracks to the sub buss, as long as the FX is the same for all the tracks in question.

What I've noticed in the process, is if say all the Acoustic Guitar tracks are panned differently, let's say two are panned at 9 o'clock, and two are panned at 3 o'clock, when they are sent to the Acoustic Guitar sub buss, the panning transfers ok, but if the sub buss is panned at center, I also seem to be hearing all four tracks "to some small degree" in the center of my mix.  Now I don't know if I just think I'm hearing it that way or if it's just a result of how everything is panned, or if it's because the sub buss is panned center.  So I was wondering if this is typically the best way to maintain the pan settings of the original tracks now that I'm routing them to a sub buss.  

If anyone has suggestions for setting things up a different way that might work better, I'm open to hearing your thoughts.......or if I'm actually going about this the wrong way,   then please let me know where I'm off.   Much appreciated, will check back later. Thank you!

MM

Edited March 17, 2020 by musikman1

[DeeringAmps]

You’ve got it right. I would Solo the buss, then solo each panned track to check its “position”. Assuming that you have a stereo effect on the buss, that could be the cause of a “phantom” center. Test each track with the, reverb I’m assuming, on and off. Since the introduction of aux tracks I put the common effect  in an aux and send it to the Guitars buss as well. That way each guitar can have it’s own level of effect. 

t

[lapasoa]

When you want to send a track sound to a sub bus, in the inspector view or in the console view's send panel you have two buttons. One is volume and a smaller one called pan.

[RBH]

Were your original acoustic tracks stereo - or - mono tracks. The panning laws may have been different on your older versions of sonar. There may a different scenario if those tracks were ever rendered and subsequently exported. If they are original tracks from your older install - then possibly the panning laws were different - but hopefully can be made right by just adjusting placement and volume.  Weather they were routed to a simple stereo master buss  previously - or to a new stereo sub-buss shouldn't really matter.

Edited March 19, 2020 by RBH

[musikman1]

Thanks for the replies.  RBH, some of my older tracks were stereo, some were mono, so I've been going on case by case basis, but I understand what you're saying. There's not much I can do about panning the tracks that were recorded in stereo, but a lot of those were keyboard/synth tracks. Back then I was just starting out learning the guitar, so I wasn't really good enough to record a lot of my own guitar tracks. I'm a keyboard player primarily.

lapasoa, I see what you're talking about, but apparantly I'm not using it.....what's the difference between the Send panel in the Console View, and the Output in the Track View? I'm asking because right now for example I have all the Acoustic Guitar tracks' Outputs routing to the Ac Guitar Sub buss, and that Ac Guitar Sub buss routed to the Master buss, and for panning I'm just using the Pan slider in the Track view.  The Send panel section in the Console View is grayed out right now because I haven't entered any destination, so I guess I'm bypassing that option the way I have it set up.  I guess what I'm trying to say is, wouldn't each method of panning accomplish the same thing, whether I'm using the Pan slider in the track view, or the Pan knob in the console's Send section?

DeeringAmps, thanks for mentioning the FX, I had not thought about the FX may be causing the ghosting at the center, I'll check that by soloing, good idea.

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by musikman1