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Old 06-20-2022, 08:52 PM   #22
Klangfarben
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Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Los Angeles, CA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by schwa View Post
Linear panning is really not appropriate except maybe in some very technical applications.
We really have three ways to accomplish pan law. Linear, square law and sine law. But honestly, that's not what is important here. What is important is equal gain and equal power. Linear results in equal gain/amplitude. Square and sine law result in equal power.

As others have pointed out, Cubase/Nuendo, Logic and Pro Tools all use equal gain for their pan law. So saying that linear panning is not appropriate except in some technical applications is NOT accurate at all because most DAW users whether they realize it or not are using equal gain for pan law, not equal power.

It also means that Reaper users coming from any of those DAWs or receiving files from any of those DAWs are going to have to jump through hoops just to get the pan law sounding the same/similar.

Quote:
Originally Posted by schwa View Post
There is a reasonable discussion of why at the bottom of this page:
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~music/icm-on...dings/panlaws/
There are two issues with this article. First, is that while the math is correct, the opinion of which approach is better is simply that of one person. Second, even if you agree with this person's opinion, the reality again is that most DAW users are in fact using equal gain, not equal power because that is how the DAW they are working in is coded. The author also doesn't take into account -6dB pan law as an option at all, even though they really should have.

So, when you say, bah, linear, no one uses it or should use it, let's bail on it, that's pretty concerning because you are imposing that choice on everyone. Now, you are the captains of the ship, so imposing your choice on us is completely captains prerogative. But in this case to be fair, your reasoning for doing so is a bit suspect and is making this unnecessarily complicated, especially for new users.

Think of it this way. If you are doing complex editing work, sometimes an equal power fade works when an equal gain fade doesn't and vice versa. You are never exclusively using one or the other. It is the same situation here. Sometimes people are going to want an equal gain pan law and sometimes they aren't.

As you can see from the people coming from other DAWs who are very confused, it is because they are used to using equal gain while Reaper defaults to equal power. And just going through the options in the project settings, it's really hard for them to figure out which one they want to be using. I think most users are going to have no idea what a "Linear scale above -3dB pan law" checkbox means whereas if you rename the 3.x deprecated option to "equal gain pan law" or something similar that is less confusing. Again, when multiple users are saying they couldn't recreate the correct pan law for them until they selected the deprecated option, imho you shouldn't get rid of the deprecated option.
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