Did you ever think about

natural mix placement? The fact that you hear a vocal in

the middle of two speakers, or in the middle of your headphones, but
there's no speaker in the middle. This vocal should sound like
it's coming from the center. [MUSIC] If I pan it to the left, it should
sound like it's coming from the left. [MUSIC] If I pan it to the right, it should
sound like it's coming from the right. [MUSIC] If I sweep from left to right, It
should appear to move
evenly across the spectrum. I've set up the same oo to
move from left to right, back to left, back to right. [MUSIC] Might be a little bit
hard to tell whether
the center is getting louder or quieter. Let's look at our center signal. Currently
it's set for -3.0 dB. I'm going to place it at- 2.5 dB. Open up a track to record
to. And record a vocal. Going to my- 2.5 dB track. [MUSIC] Now, I will record that
vocal
going to my -6 dB track and change my pan loss setting to -6.0 dB. Let's see if
there's a difference. [MUSIC] The center signal is at about this point. We move
down and
we look at the -2.5 dB signal, we see that there's more
amplitude on the -2.5 signal. There's less amplitude on the -6.0 signal. Pan law
has actually attenuated the- 6.0 dB signal, more than a -2.5 signal. My DAW is
usually set to -3 dB. When I work on another DAW,
I make sure that those settings are compatible with what
I've been working on. This matters because the center of
the spectrum is where the lead vocal is. You want to maximize the ability of the
lead vocal to be performed in the center. Anything that can disrupt this will make
a difference in your vocal recordings.