Minor Bug: Pan jumps from 0% to 3%

Nystagmus · 12-13-2015, 08:51 PM

This is a very minor bug, but when panning stereo tracks (and possibly mono tracks too) using the default pan law and default pan settings...

...the pan level jumps from 0% to 3% in both directions.

This might seem negligeable for some users, but when making precision tweaks for stereo balance this actually matters if one side is clipping and is louder than the other side and a simple panning of 1 or 2% can fix it.

I have actually used panning in exactly those situations. There were times when a 1% or 2% tweak of panning stopped the output from clipping and my tracks were then done for mastering. (The levels were high because it was at the final step before uploading to file sharing sites, etc. Don't worry, I use a limiter on my output. It's not about the track volumes. )

I like to have my tracks stereo balanced properly so that one side doesn't sound louder than the other.

As a workaround, I set the track panning to dual pan so I'd have precision control. But it would be nice if the panning just worked as intended. Linearity of linear functions actually matters. Like I said, it's a minor bug. Hopefully it wouldn't take much to fix it.

Tale · 12-13-2015, 10:56 PM

I can go down to 2% at my end (currently on Mac OS X), but indeed I can't set pan to 1%. That is, using my MacBook's touchpad, I can type in the value 1L or 1R for 1%.

Nystagmus · 12-14-2015, 05:15 PM

I tried the mousewheel with the pan dial and it jumps values even more during the whole span from zero to 100%.
I don't see any way to do data entry to enter the exact pan desired. So the minor problem remains.

Nystagmus · 12-15-2015, 09:29 AM

Yeah Vinod, it's not uncommon for bugs to not be present in all versions of Windows nor on all platforms. Reaper supports Wine and I use it in Windows 7 and Windows XP modes. But I really don't think it's a wine problem. I don't use Windows 10 nor Windows 10 mode and I still have the problem.

I don't think it's about the type of mouse either. Mine's a standard USB logitech mouse. Thanks for your curiousity, yet I think it's still a valid bug report.