Bouncing Down

[David Yates]

Hello All,

I am bouncing 6-8 tracks down to two (stereo) tracks to free up some space. These tracks include guitars, drums, bass, and percussion which are all panned to different areas. I understand that while bouncing down to two tracks, I will keep my tracks panned for stereo sound.
My question is, once these tracks are bounced down to two stereo tracks, what directions should the two tracks be panned?
When I pan both tracks to 12 o'clock seems too central. I have been putting one track at 11 o'clock and the other at one o'clock. I am not sure if this keeps the pans of the original tracks.
Thanks!

 

[Phil Tipping]

Hi David, the balance on the stereo tracks should be central. Once you've positioned mono signals into a stereo mix/bounce, there should be no need to alter this, so assuming you had the same sound field in your head when you panned signals for each bounce, you just need to mix the two results together as-is. The 'balance' on a stereo track is for fine adjustments to shift the whole stereo field, e.g. to correct a bias. The 'too central' problem might be due to phase cancellations between signals in each pair of bounces, in which case these need correcting before bouncing. Try playing pairs of signals to see which ones cause problems.