Rubens wrote:Hi, Surfwhammy, I have sound but my Notion output doesn't show stereo pairs like Ch1-2 or Ch22-23 as we see in the attached image from woodrow, but only 1l+1R, 2l+2R etc. Why is that so?
NOTION 3 used "Ch. 1-2", but NOTION 4 does it a different way, where the numbering is based on having 32 stereo pairs . . .
So, to get "Ch. 9-10" you select "5L + 5R" . . .
Once selected, it displays in the NOTION 4 Mixer as "Ch. 9-10", but in Digital Performer it is displayed as the first few characters of "5L + 5R" . . .
The way I remember it is that the stereo channel pairs are (odd, even) and the counting begins with 1, so you look at the even number and divide it in half, where for example if you want "Ch. 17-18", then you select "9L + 9R" . . .
I like it the way it was In NOTION 3, but it is not difficult to do the mapping for NOTION 4 once you remember the forumla . . .
Rubens wrote:The question is: should I control the pan from DP or from Notion? If it is from DP, how if I can't have stereo outputs assigned from Notion to DP?
NOTION 4 almost has true stereo panning controls, where the "almost" aspect is that the volume slider controls both the left channel volume and the right channel volume equally rather than having a separate volume control for the left channel and a separate volume control for the right channel . . .
However, you can move the left and right channels independently in the custom NOTION 4 stereo panning control, which maps to being able to pan the left and right channels separately . . .
The best technique for panning depends on several factors, including (a) the content of the left and right channels and (b) what you need to do in Digital Performer when you switch to producing and mixing . . .
It also is important to understand that Digital Performer provides stereo balance controls rather than stereo panning controls, but you can use the MOTU Trim plug-in to do true stereo panning, but again with the caveat that Digital Performer stereo tracks have a single volume slider that sets the left channel volume and the right channel volume . . .
However, with the MOTU Trim control added to the effects or "Inserts" chain, you can control both the individual channel panning and individual channel volume, but for individual channel volume only in the range of -40 dB to +40 dB, where the practical aspect is using -40 dB to map approximately to no volume and 0 dB to map to full volume. Going beyond 0 dB involves amplifying, so usually is not something you want to do . . .
Panning is very important, but until you take the time to understand how all the various controls and applications handle panning for stereo tracks, it is difficult to make sense of everything . . .
In fact, panning is so important that I am starting to wonder whether there is an industry conspiracy to prevent people from understanding how panning actually works and what one can do with panning, perhaps toward the goal of preventing the common folk from being able to create hit records in home studios . . .
Another possibility is that the various software engineers are just as confused as everyone else, except the folks who have multi-million dollar studios and produce hit records . . .
At present, I discount the conspiracy theory, because (a) it probably is too complex and (b) it would require too many team meetings to be practical . . .
For reference, the way I discovered the most recent bit of information regarding panning was entirely a bit of serendipity, since I had not noticed it . . .
Specifically, nearly all "stereo" sampled instruments are recorded with two microphones, where the output of one microphone is the left channel and the output of the other microphone is the right channel, with the general goal being to capture locational information. When one is focused primarily on Pop music or any genre where it is important for the listener actually to be able to hear the music, there is not a lot of difference in the two channels (Left, right), which in turn makes it possible treat a "stereo" track as if it were a monaural track for panning purposes, albiet in Digital Performer when there is a Trim control at the end of the effects chain, since a Digital Performer stereo audio track with a MOTU Trim control works essentially the same way as a stereo audio track in NOTION 4, except that there is more control over the respective volume levels of the two channels in Digital Performer, but not completely, because at the -40 dB setting there is some of the channel . . .
More to the point, I was experimenting with a "stereo" synthesizer track which had something completely different for each channel, where for example the left channel was a drumkit and the right channel was a tenor saxophone; and what happened is that no matter what I did, there always as a tiny bit of drumkit and tenor saxophone . . .
I could have the tenor saxophone at normal volume and the drumkit at -40 dB, but I still heard the drumkit; and the same thing happened with I switched the respective volume levels . . .
Prior to this, I described the NOTION 4 panning control and the Digital Performer panning control enhanced with the MOTU Trim control as being "true stereo panning" controls, but without being able to turn the volume for each channel all the way OFF, they are
not true stereo panning controls. Instead, they are almost true panning controls . . .
Consequently, the only way to do it is to split the two channels and route each channel to a separate monaural audio track, since (a) the panning control for a monaural audio track is a true panning control and (b) you can turn the volume all the way OFF for a monaural audio track . . .
One of the best way to understand the importance of panning is to study a few songs, one of which is "Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus), where you listen to the song with studio quality headphones like the SONY MDR-7506 (a personal favorite) over and over toward the goal of being able to hear
everything in an immediately conscious way . . .
"Who Owns My Heart" (Miley Cyrus) ~ YouTube music videoSpecifically, you want to pay attention to where the individual instruments, vocals, and sound effects originate, where for example I am comfortable suggesting that there are at least 100 different vocal tracks, many of which are the beginning consonants or tails of words, custom echoes, occasional auto-tuned phrases, random choral warbling, and so forth to the extent that it is a bit mind-boggling . . .
And there are instruments and voices that are heard only at far-left or far-right, which is not possible when you cannot position the various sounds with extreme precision, with this being a combination of panning, volume controlling, ducking, brick wall equalizing, reverberating, delaying, echoing, phasing, and other types of advanced signal processing . . .
These are the rules I use:
(1) Producing and mixing is done in Digital Performer or another Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) application if you are not using Digital Performer . . .
(2) Panning is an arranging, producing, and mixing activity, hence is best done in the Digital Performer . . .
(3) I do
not use plug-ins in the NOTION 4 Mixer, but depending on what I need to do, I set the NOTION 4 panning for instruments either (a) to full panning or (b) to a very specific panning setting when I want to position something in a particular location, at least to the extent this is possible . . .
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NOTE: Since you can adjust the panning in Digital Performer via the MOTU Trim control, and you also can split the stereo soundbite into two monaural tracks to enable true panning, the simplest strategy is to leave the NOTION 4 panning set to full panning, but you can experiment with different strategies. The following screen capture shows the different types of panning settings I use, where the setting for the K5 Trombone is "full panning". These are the settings I used in the NOTION 4 Mixer for the respective instruments in "She Wants You", but I adjusted the panning in Digital Performer once the NOTION 4 generated audio was recorded as soundbites via ReWire 2 . . . ]
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NOTE: This is the MOTU Trim plug-in for the K5 Trombone in the Digital Performer Mixing Board, where the left channel is panned to far-right with its volume set to -40 dB, while the right channel is moved a tiny bit to the right of top-center. Note that in the NOTION 4 Mixer the K5 Trombone is set to "full" panning . . . ]
"She Wants You" (The Surf Whammys) ~ Basic Rhythm Section ~ YouTube music video(4) I set all the volume sliders to 0 dB in the NOTION 4 Mixer, and I do this because I want the resulting soundbites in Digital Performer to be consistent with the sampled sounds, which is based on the presumption that 0 dB is the neutral setting for the NOTION 4 volume sliders, neither cutting nor boosting the raw sampled sounds . . .
(5) I also keep all the volume sliders in Digital Performer pegged to 0 dB and use compressor-limiters to do the actual volume adjusting; and I have different types of compressor-limiters for different instruments and vocals, since one type works nicely for bass, while another type works nicely for guitars, and so forth . . .
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