Primary Controls

What is Panpot?

Panpot brings together four different modes of panning in a single plugin that will transform the way you think about stereo.
How does it work & what’s wrong with my current panner?

There are a few different auditory cues that enable humans to hear spatially — that is, to identify the size, location, and distance
of a sound in space. These cues fall into four main categories:

•Level Differences (ILD)
•Time Differences (ITD)
•Spectral Cues
•Distance Effects

The traditional audio level panner — the one found on almost every audio console since the 1970’s — gives an engineer control
of only one of these cues: level differences. Level panning works well enough for some things, but it often falls short, forcing
us to rely on other tools (like delays, reverbs, stereo widening, EQ, …) to achieve more depth and definition in the stereo field.


Advanced Controls


You can think of level panning as panning in black & white; while you can convey some sense of light and dark, you don’t have
access to the same depth, nuance, and range that you would if you were working in color. Panpot gives you the full color spectrum
for stereo audio cues. You can choose to use it however you like: for realistic, hyper-realistic, or totally unrealistic spatial
effects — Panpot gives you four different panning “colors,” but we don’t tell you what to paint.


Panning Types:

Level — a refined version of the classic level pan, Panpot’s Level panning offers superior automatability and includes
several pan law options.


Level panning (-3dB pan law with compensation)



Delay — the Delay panning module creates a strong sense of sidedness without altering the stereo level balance. By using
small time delays that closely model human hearing delays (at 1x), the Delay pan produces immersive stereo images with more
depth and width.


Delay panning left/right arrival times


Spectral — Panpot’s Spectral panning works by changing the timbre of the stereo image, focusing higher frequency sounds
toward the pan direction. The Spectral algorithm mimics the type of head shadowing that occurs in nature and can sound
hard-panned without feeling ungrounded or off-kilter in the low end.


Spectral panning shown for three different frequencies


Phase — The most unusual panning type: Panpot’s Phase module creates a constant phase shift between the left and right
channels. Similar to Delay panning, Phase panning does not alter the stereo level balance but instead alters the arrival times
of the left/right channels. Phase panning can help move elements out of the center of a mix, decluttering the mono image and
creating a more expansive sound field.

Phase panning shown at 1x


Is Panpot a "3D Audio" panner?

Hell no. While Panpot can produce some very “3D” sounding effects, it does not do things that rely on individualized HRTF’s,
like elevation & front/back placement (more info on HRTF’s here). We chose to avoid these things because, frankly, they don’t
work very well, and they depend highly on the shape, size, and placement of your actual ears. Instead, we focused on cues that
translate well on a number of stereo systems: speakers, headphones, laptops, etc., and expand the expressiveness of panning without
focusing exclusively on mimicking reality.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pSdHLPdohA

Panpot is available for $49

Available Formats:

Mac OS X ≥ 10.7
Audio Unit 64-Bit (AU64)
AAX 64-Bit
Why Mac Only?

More INFO: Goodhertz | Panpot

 

Thanks, Dingus. Always keeping us all up to date. Already downloading. I hope it turns out to be one of these plug-ins that solve a problem I didn't know existed.

BTW, reading their FAQ I learned there's a way to earn a 50% off coupon. Way to go.

 

I guess Mac people have asked the same about thousands of win only vst plugins

 

Aww no Win32/x86, and it seemed to be a good one too.

While you can probably replicate some/all features with some other x-platform plugs (stereo field rotation, FFT phase rotation/Voxengo PHA-979, Frequency panning/Nugen Stereoplacer, etc), there's no all-in-one for Win32/x86 that I know of.