Cubase Balanced Panner versus Combined Panner

Selecting what type of pan behaviour you want in your DAW is as important as selecting the bit depth and sample rate. Disregard the Pan Law and how panning behaves and you’ll be in trouble.

Balanced and Combined panners

The power of today’s DAWs never fails to surprise me. The number of wonderful utility plugins that come with modern DAWs is remarkable and Cubase houses a lovely pan feature whereby you can specify the type of panner to use. You have a choice between Balanced or Combined Panners and each has its strengths.

With the stereo combined panner, the left and right pan controls are linked and keep their relative distance if you move them. This is in effect a range panner in that you are moving a whole range of frequencies in the stereo field.

The stereo balance panner allows you to control the balance between the left and right channels. Also known as spot panning whereby you pan a sound anywhere in the stereo field.

In the video I explain the differences between the two types of panners and how they work.