When a track has two outputs, I get basically a panner for each one. Instead of moving the second out more to the left, I’d like to reduce its volume. Is this possible?
I would think multiple faders would be the the most simple solution, but it is not a high priority
i know you’re used to thinking about terms like “stereo” and “mono” when describing tracks. unfortunately, a lot of other DAWs and certainly home stereo equipment do not implement “panning” but instead just do “balance”, and this encourages thinking that its sensible to “pan” multiple signals at one time via a “balance”-like control.
its easier to think about N-in/M-out as the basic description of a track. if you have 1 input and 2 outputs, there is a single signal to position between the two outputs. in this case there is a single panner that moves the signal between the “left” and “right”.
if you have 2 inputs and 2 outputs, there are two signals to position between the two outputs. if you pan them both hard left & right, you get a very “wide” stereo image. if you move them both toward the center, you get a very narrow stereo image.
you can do any kind of signal handling with ardour, the only question is how tricky you need to get. what you are describing is an atypical request, so you’d need to do a bit more work. specifically, don’t route the track outs directly to the master outs (or any physical outputs) but send each one via a 1in/1out bus so that you have individual control over it.
paul - that’s what I figured (multiple buses). I was trying to do this with a stereo mic’ed acoustic guitar track. Since I used an M/S setup, I recorded to one stereo track instead of two mono tracks to take advantage of the M/S matrix plugin. However, I want to make a little room on the right channel and move the image a bit to the left. Moving the right output to the left will cancel the side mic on the left, reducing the volume on both channels.
I didn’t think this kind of control would be atypical, but I guess I’m wrong. Thanks for the reply.
Hi Paul,
I understand your descriptions but I also came in the situation, that this behavior becomes quite uncomfortable. Lets think you are recording with a AB microphone stereo setup. This uses timeshift as a interchannel signal. The consequence is, that you are not allowed to use panning exept hard left or hard right because every kind of mixing the right and left channel causes bad interfernces. So if you want to use AB setups, which is very usual in classical recordings, you may never use stereo tracks. You have to use single tracks for every channel if you want to be able to manipulate the stereo image. This is a problem i got a lot of times.
-Erdie
well, sorry, but i just don’t see anyway to manage this. you’ve got two signals and two outputs. you want a single control to move both outputs to the left or right? then erdie steps in and notes that you can only use hard left or right pan positions. so it appears that you need per-channel gain reduction. that either means a “balance” control (the operation of which never seems to have been defined) or multiple faders. ardour has no balance controls.
i can see no precedents for this, in either the software or hardware worlds.
Every mixer I’ve ever used with stereo tracks had a pan control that was a reverse ganged fader for each channel: turning left of center would reduce the right output and vice versa - i.e. a balance control. However, this is a precedent for independent gain control for a 2-in, 2-out track.
The most elegant solution, IMO, is to keep the pan control as is, but have a dual fader that can toggle from ganged control to independent control.
Again, I reiterate that it is not a necessary feature, just something that would be nice to have. I can get the result desired by adding a couple of busses. The original intent of this thread was to make sure I was not overlooking a feature that may have already be implemented. Thanks for your time, Paul.