How Narrow Monitor Placement Can Negatively Affect The Panning In Your Mixes

The video below from Joe Albano’s complete course, 10 Common Panning Mistakes, explores a common mixing mistake: bunching up tracks in the same panning positions. One of the problems when mixing in a home or project studios, aside from bass response and room tone, is having monitor speakers placed too closely to each other.

For proper stereo imaging the monitors need to be positioned at about a 60-degree angle forming an equilateral triangle between them and the listener to get that “sweet spot”. Narrow speaker placement can lead to less than good imaging choices.

This is especially important when providing clarity and details for large modern mixes full of lots of instruments, sounds and ear candy. Close speaker placement can take away from the inability for subtle positioning and it’s then all too easy to assign many elements of the arrangement to the same locations.

There’s plenty of tips and useful explanations in this video here that can be applied to mixing every style of music.

Watch the video tutorial on “bunching up” here:

Joe Albano goes on to explain how the excellent early (vintage?) recordings from bands like The Beatles which were mono recordings were not intended to be heard in stereo, and how they were adapted for a “fake” stereo mix by panning parts left, right and center. 

Improve your panning and mixing techniques & watch the complete course, 10 Common Panning Mistakes in The Ask.Audio Academy here.