I'm not sure there's a good resource other than just trawling through the manual but I only noticed this due to working on my converter, so I can see if there's a unique behavior. If I come across more of them I will be sure to do so :)
I went to a a Academy to learn more all about everything. I learned a lot of analouge stuff, but regarding the software and use of it.... I just started to read the Manual of Abelton and already learned a lot more from that. The manuals are Huge, but they are worth it. My recommendation would be, to look up the shortcut section, try them out, remember them and the ones you don't understand the function of use: ctrl+f to look that function up in the manual. rinse and repeat. After that just try reading this thing, you'll find a lot of additional functions and usages along the way.
Extremely useful especially as an experienced producer. I always lower panned objects/audio and slightly boost the volume on non-panned items. Now I understand why, I KNEW the program was altering SOMETHING slightly. More videos like this on FL studio please! Your analysis is great!
@@djofftheshit dont even tend to people like that. 0 videos uploaded 0 everything but leaves snarky loser ass comments. Get a life "Jim Baker" who is a 'producer' we've never heard of
@@djofftheshit I was never handed a musical instrument, I was never told "wow you're so good! you're gonna be a musician one day!" I had a hard life. I even failed music class in elementary school. But one day, a person who didnt even know, bestowed this amazing gift upon me called "Music Production" even so, I never considered myself a musician. I was experimenting. I wound up making hundreds of instrumentals for people all over my city so sorry if I missed out on some of the basics but no one held my hand as a kid and said "You're gonna do this, and you're gonna be great!" No. It was all an accident that kept going.
@Jim Baker Stop being so boring. Is he hurting your ego so much that you have to write an essay just because he don't know about panning laws. Sounds a little elitist to me.
The reason for -3dB in the center is that it's that it's equal to half volume (due to a bunch of math related to it being a logarithmic scale) . When a sound is centered, you have twice the amount of speakers you'd have were it hard panned, so you want half volume. The 'pan law' has to do with how it *transitions* from being full volume in one speaker to half volume when centered.
Panning rules that use a value other than -3dB are often trying to compensate not just for volume, but *loudness*. Volume is the literal value shown on the meter, whereas loudness is how we as humans perceive it. with the -3dB rule, the *volume* is the same when it's centered or hard panned, since when it's only coming out of one speaker it's twice as loud as when it comes out of both. But the *loudness* might feel a bit different as our brains perceive a sound only coming from one source differently. This is why some DAWs have a pan option that's different from -3dB, to adjust for perceived loudness.
That is almost right, but completely wrong haha 1. Half the volume is -6dB, thats a quick google search 2. Double the speakers doesn't double the volume. It's more like 1.4 or something
@@nenntmichbond You have a misconception here. Your -6dB figure you've found relates to a halving of voltage or SPL, not to the actual power of the signal. However, -3dB is a literal halving of power. In the underlying DSP, it's straight up just dividing the signal amplitude by two (multiplying by a gain factor of 0.5). '-3dB' is simply how that translates to the logarithmic scaling we use. I think you may also be conflating 'volume' with 'loudness' which I addressed in my first reply citing alternate pan rules.
YES! Thank you for covering this! As an avid FL Studio user, I too, noticed this but never took the time to look up the reason why or ask if anyone else noticed it. I simply would just boost the volume with the channel knob. Lol
Another thing that surprised me is, that the pan knob in the step sequencer is actually a balance knob. If you take a stereo signal that contains of lets say bass and drums. Bass hard left, drums hard right. If you use the "pan-knob" in the step sequencer and hard pan left in this case the drums disappear and vice versa. If you would do the same in the mixer, both signals - drums and bass - would be audbile only in the left speaker which is actually pan rather than balance...
Fun physics fact: doubling an object that emits sound, will increase the volume by 3dB. This may explain why 'removing' one side of sound by panning, could be stabilized by adding to that 3dB loss.
I Knew about the panning law in FL. I did not know you can Alt+LeftClick to reset velocity. 🤤Makes sense considering you can Alt+LeftClick everything else.
What you see in Ableton is called "Equal power" crossfade. Its purpose is the same. Protools explicitly lists it under that name. Some of the crossfade modes (if not all) in FL Studio audio clips are equal power too.
i was always wondering why things weren't as loud as in the playlist. never thought there was an actual valid reason behind it, let alone panning like this. thanks!
teh easier conceptualisation: *cosine panning law* 2d rotation gives you two vectors and "90 degrees" continuous transform between them, so center = 45 deg. .7071 amplitude, roughly 3dB (.7079, or 10 to the power of -3/20). the best panning reference i found was on teh official MIDI site but for reals eventually you realise i'm teh only sane audio develoiper and just use fing cosine.
I think this behaviour is because in stereo audio, when hard panned to the left or right channel, it's like -3db than their sum when center panned. It's the same reason why everybody lower 3db of gain to stereo signals converted to mono, or when the same signal is duplicated and both are identical. So FL is trying to boost the isolated channels by their default 3db decrease, and lower it when their sum boost that 3db
When you duplicate a signal, it's 6db louder than it was before. Based on that some pan laws cut the center by 6db - however sometimes when the signal is not an exact copy that can lead to much lower volume in the center due to phase cancellation. That's why there's 3db of cutting in FL - it's a compensation between the two.
Pan law is the thing that you never need until you need it and then you're confused as heck. Important to understand it. In Reaper you can choose how the DAW handles panning.
After so many years... Finally someone talks about this... When nobody talked about why id the step sequencer quieter than dragging the sample to the playlist. Thanks Dylan, sincerely.
To get some more in depth information about this topic I'd advise checking out Dan Worrall's videos: "How to mix in stereo... without sucking in mono" Great video Dylan!
Snaphead doesn't do anything unless you enabled parallel mode between two tracks, for which it doubles your signal without automatic gain compensation. Multipass however will immediately mess with your sound due to its mediocre crossovers. Most of eq and multiband effects will do that, except for the best ones (for exemple iZotope and Fabfilter handle that well)
I had two instances of one thing on two different openings on the same plugin, with one hard panned left, and the other, hard panned right, and all I got was a wide stereo effect.
THIS I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE TRYING TO DO THIS. I asked them about fowards compatibility. They said it was impossible to do on the forum. I tried opening a project made in FL 20 to 11 all I would get is stuff not opening correctly and a message from FL telling me it was made in a recent or older version of fl. :(
Lmao the entire first like… minute of this I was thinking “this guy is about to spread some bad infor because he doesn’t know about panning laws” and lo and behold you’re actually just really good at explaining complex stuff from almost no info, fantastic shit, good stuff, toppest of notches
I’ve always noticed that having a sound turned all the way purple (on the mixer thing, other side is blue, forget the term it uses but I think blue is spreading it out fully with stereo and purple is merging it together to be fully mono) will make it notably quieter, and have often compensated for that by raising the volume. Then, for other people, it’s too loud. It’s probably something to do with my headphones, so I’ll keep this in mind!
The wider a sound is the louder it is in the mix bc it stands out more. You always wanna make sure you tweak the gain to a value you think is good after making something wider. For the “Mono being louder to other people” thing, i’ve noticed if you make something that’s stereo into mono it tends to be louder because you’re simply shoving everything that was spread out into one direction. Idk I guess a few factors could play into this but those are just a few things I know from my experience.
@@Jg-be7it As a sound engineer, you should know this, especially when it comes to working with wave signal generators in a stereo environment, i mean, if u realy study the physics of sound, it really matters
There are also different pan laws depending on whether you're listening on headphones or on true stereo speakers (not attached to your head) - e.g. linear vs constant power.
No thank you for the research on this, I greatly appreciate it! I use FL Studio all the time for professional purposes and it's good to be aware of these things!
this is why I have always changed it from circular to triangular in the settings on every project, I noticed it stopped doing anything around FL 12 and was wondering why
yeah when I’m listening to music but want to hear what’s happening around me I don’t wear the left side of my headphone, but then the audio is quieter so I put it really loud. Now I’m pretty deaf on my right ear
Reminds me of a video I found a few weeks ago about mixing in stereo such that a mono down-mix still sounds right. Too complex to put in a comment, but the audible difference between a hard-panned and centred sound is an important aspect.
You're probably referring to the "how to mix in stereo without sucking in mono" series posted by FabFilter and made by Dan Worral. That gives you everything you need to know about stereo, mid-side, what is stereo and other things.
When I tried jukeblocks and generated EDM and drum and bass and put it into fl studio most of the sounds arent even there so I just hear a kick the whole time and nothing else
It doesn't generate any chords or melodies (yet), so the idea is to fill in the patterns with your own basslines/melodies/etc. If you have a paid account you can add synths to the project files too, but you still need to write your own melodies (for now). It's essentially an outline for a song that you fill in. It doesn't create the full song for you (yet...)
I thought everyone knew this. Read this back in FL 9, 14 years ago. Should make a video showing folks how to make their mixer channel EQ actually work, because you have to change another setting before it's doing what you think it's doing.
im just glad dylan is alive again
He’s and Undead he can’t die
More vids like this please I love learning about what goes on behind the scenes on fl, any way I can learn more?
I'm not sure there's a good resource other than just trawling through the manual but I only noticed this due to working on my converter, so I can see if there's a unique behavior.
If I come across more of them I will be sure to do so :)
the manual might be daunting, but it's incredibly well written and chock full of juicy wisdom
I mean you’re interested in this and he did tell you exactly where to find the information...
I went to a a Academy to learn more all about everything. I learned a lot of analouge stuff, but regarding the software and use of it.... I just started to read the Manual of Abelton and already learned a lot more from that.
The manuals are Huge, but they are worth it.
My recommendation would be, to look up the shortcut section, try them out, remember them and the ones you don't understand the function of use: ctrl+f to look that function up in the manual. rinse and repeat. After that just try reading this thing, you'll find a lot of additional functions and usages along the way.
@@comradecoffee See what you did there
Extremely useful especially as an experienced producer. I always lower panned objects/audio and slightly boost the volume on non-panned items. Now I understand why, I KNEW the program was altering SOMETHING slightly. More videos like this on FL studio please! Your analysis is great!
Same!
@Jim Baker We're all students, my friend
@@djofftheshit dont even tend to people like that. 0 videos uploaded 0 everything but leaves snarky loser ass comments. Get a life "Jim Baker" who is a 'producer' we've never heard of
@@djofftheshit I was never handed a musical instrument, I was never told "wow you're so good! you're gonna be a musician one day!" I had a hard life. I even failed music class in elementary school. But one day, a person who didnt even know, bestowed this amazing gift upon me called "Music Production" even so, I never considered myself a musician. I was experimenting. I wound up making hundreds of instrumentals for people all over my city so sorry if I missed out on some of the basics but no one held my hand as a kid and said "You're gonna do this, and you're gonna be great!" No. It was all an accident that kept going.
@Jim Baker Stop being so boring. Is he hurting your ego so much that you have to write an essay just because he don't know about panning laws. Sounds a little elitist to me.
The reason for -3dB in the center is that it's that it's equal to half volume (due to a bunch of math related to it being a logarithmic scale) . When a sound is centered, you have twice the amount of speakers you'd have were it hard panned, so you want half volume.
The 'pan law' has to do with how it *transitions* from being full volume in one speaker to half volume when centered.
Panning rules that use a value other than -3dB are often trying to compensate not just for volume, but *loudness*. Volume is the literal value shown on the meter, whereas loudness is how we as humans perceive it.
with the -3dB rule, the *volume* is the same when it's centered or hard panned, since when it's only coming out of one speaker it's twice as loud as when it comes out of both. But the *loudness* might feel a bit different as our brains perceive a sound only coming from one source differently. This is why some DAWs have a pan option that's different from -3dB, to adjust for perceived loudness.
@@made.online2149 You are correct.
That is almost right, but completely wrong haha
1. Half the volume is -6dB, thats a quick google search
2. Double the speakers doesn't double the volume. It's more like 1.4 or something
@@nenntmichbond You have a misconception here. Your -6dB figure you've found relates to a halving of voltage or SPL, not to the actual power of the signal.
However, -3dB is a literal halving of power. In the underlying DSP, it's straight up just dividing the signal amplitude by two (multiplying by a gain factor of 0.5). '-3dB' is simply how that translates to the logarithmic scaling we use.
I think you may also be conflating 'volume' with 'loudness' which I addressed in my first reply citing alternate pan rules.
So it would be better for desktop speakers than headphones?
YES! Thank you for covering this! As an avid FL Studio user, I too, noticed this but never took the time to look up the reason why or ask if anyone else noticed it. I simply would just boost the volume with the channel knob. Lol
oh hi tails lol
haha *_avid_* FL studio user.
@@WojackToter Heyo Dust!
@@snaekboi Uhh, yes? I'm not sure what you're implying.
Edit: Unless it's a Pro Tools reference?
@@FoxerTails yes, it was a protools reference.
_Retarded joke, but whatever._
This is why you have to trust your ears instead of your eyes when it comes to producing
ya sometimes -12 is louder than -6
Facts
I have YEARS looking for this specific issue, thank you.
Another thing that surprised me is, that the pan knob in the step sequencer is actually a balance knob. If you take a stereo signal that contains of lets say bass and drums. Bass hard left, drums hard right. If you use the "pan-knob" in the step sequencer and hard pan left in this case the drums disappear and vice versa. If you would do the same in the mixer, both signals - drums and bass - would be audbile only in the left speaker which is actually pan rather than balance...
This is crazy!
that's why i never use panning in the channel rack again ever
I never really used the panning knob on the rack and this will reinforce that unless I want that specific effect for some weird reason.
I did not realize this...thank you
Same for the "balance" knob in Fruity Balance, it's actually a pan knob. I wonder if they'll ever rename them lol
I’ve heard about this circular panning law many times. Never knew exactly what it meant!! Now it makes sense. Thanks a lot 🙏🏾
i always wondered why auto panner changed volume.. love this man you are so epic
Fun physics fact: doubling an object that emits sound, will increase the volume by 3dB. This may explain why 'removing' one side of sound by panning, could be stabilized by adding to that 3dB loss.
I Knew about the panning law in FL. I did not know you can Alt+LeftClick to reset velocity. 🤤Makes sense considering you can Alt+LeftClick everything else.
L theta squirt
I guess thats the reason why mono samples needs somewhere 40% panning to level both left and right.
What you see in Ableton is called "Equal power" crossfade. Its purpose is the same. Protools explicitly lists it under that name. Some of the crossfade modes (if not all) in FL Studio audio clips are equal power too.
This is one of those few times where I mindfully liked the video and subscribed because of the actual quality omg.
i was always wondering why things weren't as loud as in the playlist. never thought there was an actual valid reason behind it, let alone panning like this. thanks!
/watch?v=R5RONpezKAI
“L theta squirt” bruh
awesome vid, nice to see how the program we use actually works
Dylan man you could be talking about trees and I would listen just because you would talk about the way you do which is just hilarious 😂
teh easier conceptualisation: *cosine panning law*
2d rotation gives you two vectors and "90 degrees" continuous transform between them, so center = 45 deg. .7071 amplitude, roughly 3dB (.7079, or 10 to the power of -3/20). the best panning reference i found was on teh official MIDI site but for reals eventually you realise i'm teh only sane audio develoiper and just use fing cosine.
kf
Wtf all that math and producing?
father where has thou been
Finally a new video! Thank you so much.
We need more of you’re stuff *daba di daba da*
1:48 I love this demonstration
Super happy to see Dylan back!
I think this behaviour is because in stereo audio, when hard panned to the left or right channel, it's like -3db than their sum when center panned. It's the same reason why everybody lower 3db of gain to stereo signals converted to mono, or when the same signal is duplicated and both are identical.
So FL is trying to boost the isolated channels by their default 3db decrease, and lower it when their sum boost that 3db
When you duplicate a signal, it's 6db louder than it was before. Based on that some pan laws cut the center by 6db - however sometimes when the signal is not an exact copy that can lead to much lower volume in the center due to phase cancellation. That's why there's 3db of cutting in FL - it's a compensation between the two.
I'm guessing the +6db is theoretical, but accurate, as things get complicated with multiple physical sound sources.
This is a perfect video to watch at 4:30AM ( as I am doing right now) My mind is blown away by this basic info!
Pan law is the thing that you never need until you need it and then you're confused as heck. Important to understand it. In Reaper you can choose how the DAW handles panning.
In FL as well, if anyone's looking for it it's hidden in the "advanced" tab of the project settings.
Because you should never actually need to change it. It's emulating an analog console.
We love you Dylan please keep posting!❤️
so this is why making it more stereo using the knob in the mixer makes it louder
So thats why it gets quieter when i use the pattern sampler compared to just using the actual files
JukeBlocks looks pretty neat, thanks for the video!
After so many years... Finally someone talks about this... When nobody talked about why id the step sequencer quieter than dragging the sample to the playlist. Thanks Dylan, sincerely.
/watch?v=R5RONpezKAI
To get some more in depth information about this topic I'd advise checking out Dan Worrall's videos:
"How to mix in stereo... without sucking in mono"
Great video Dylan!
I knew it was quieter. Very useful video Dylan!
Also some effects make db level on mixer go higher, even if they are turned off and do nothing. I noticed that with Khz snapheap
Also other plugins when turned on- even parametric eq. It also can change the phase even if set to a non altering state(like a flat eq).
Snaphead doesn't do anything unless you enabled parallel mode between two tracks, for which it doubles your signal without automatic gain compensation.
Multipass however will immediately mess with your sound due to its mediocre crossovers. Most of eq and multiband effects will do that, except for the best ones (for exemple iZotope and Fabfilter handle that well)
Welcome back to the land of the living Dylan.
Great video too!!
Thank you! Omg i noticed this recently and i thought i was going crazy!
I clicked off the video and heard "hey where ya going" as the new page started to load, had to come back and comment, great video
Legendary ❤️ haha over 13 years using FL and never noticed this 😅😂
I had two instances of one thing on two different openings on the same plugin, with one hard panned left, and the other, hard panned right, and all I got was a wide stereo effect.
Great video, I always love and enjoy these kinda stuff, keep it up 👌
in two minutes, you advised me of an issue i didn't know existed, then taught me why its not actually an issue.
Thanks Dylan! I never knew about this! 😁
have you ever tried making an fl project file converter? like going from 20.9 to 20.7.2 or 20.6
THIS I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE TRYING TO DO THIS. I asked them about fowards compatibility. They said it was impossible to do on the forum. I tried opening a project made in FL 20 to 11 all I would get is stuff not opening correctly and a message from FL telling me it was made in a recent or older version of fl. :(
Lmao the entire first like… minute of this I was thinking “this guy is about to spread some bad infor because he doesn’t know about panning laws” and lo and behold you’re actually just really good at explaining complex stuff from almost no info, fantastic shit, good stuff, toppest of notches
missed u and ur videos, o smart father
I’ve always noticed that having a sound turned all the way purple (on the mixer thing, other side is blue, forget the term it uses but I think blue is spreading it out fully with stereo and purple is merging it together to be fully mono) will make it notably quieter, and have often compensated for that by raising the volume. Then, for other people, it’s too loud. It’s probably something to do with my headphones, so I’ll keep this in mind!
The wider a sound is the louder it is in the mix bc it stands out more. You always wanna make sure you tweak the gain to a value you think is good after making something wider.
For the “Mono being louder to other people” thing, i’ve noticed if you make something that’s stereo into mono it tends to be louder because you’re simply shoving everything that was spread out into one direction.
Idk I guess a few factors could play into this but those are just a few things I know from my experience.
Back then on FL 10-11 I used to always work on Triangle and it had my mixes sounding a lot louder. Might go back to using that panning law.
Honestly, for a sound designer, this is uncomfortable, thanks for the amazing video and information!
As a sound engineer, you should know this is completely normal, done in every DAW and analog console.
@@Jg-be7it I talked about the dificult way to change it in especific, i mean, on fl studio, reaper is most easy
@@SergioNilo why would you change it?
@@Jg-be7it As a sound engineer, you should know this, especially when it comes to working with wave signal generators in a stereo environment, i mean, if u realy study the physics of sound, it really matters
@@SergioNilo There is no good reason I can think of.
"Alt + Left Mouse Click to reset to default velocity".... this would have saved me so much time, if somebody had mentioned it earlier!
Amazing analysis man 🔥🔥🔥
Really neat vid, love the nerd deep dive and not another eq vid
Oh wow, I didn't even knew about the panning laws, and that's actually interesting!
There are also different pan laws depending on whether you're listening on headphones or on true stereo speakers (not attached to your head) - e.g. linear vs constant power.
Oooh I never understood this but never bothered enough to check why, this quick video was perfect, thanks !
dude, ive heard of Jukeblocks! I didnt know you were the creator, good job!!
No thank you for the research on this, I greatly appreciate it! I use FL Studio all the time for professional purposes and it's good to be aware of these things!
i noticed this once when i was paranoid mixing one of my songs and thought it was a glitch
Wait u did jukeblocks????LMAOOOO thx dude that was unexpected!i use them for my base templates ur a genious!
basically its like a sneaky compressor
this is why I have always changed it from circular to triangular in the settings on every project, I noticed it stopped doing anything around FL 12 and was wondering why
Watched til the very end. Nice. Subed. Keep up the good work.
I feel it also in ableton, it's nice to get an explanation, great vid !
Yes i noticed
I have noticed this ever since i started using FL. Glad to know why
love this kinda stuff ty
someone remembered their password
Awesome explanation!
You legend for decoding this
I'm not sure when I subbed, but I'm glad I did. Need to check out your other stuff, maybe I'll remember. :)
It’s triangular as in a right triangle.
yeah when I’m listening to music but want to hear what’s happening around me I don’t wear the left side of my headphone, but then the audio is quieter so I put it really loud. Now I’m pretty deaf on my right ear
Jeez blast from the past huh
This segue is smoother then LTT's segues! 😄 Thank you for the video, Dylan. The information about pan laws is very helpful!
thanks for making this! its helpful to know!
have a great year
This is actually really great to know
Nice informative video as usual with some fun added to it
I use the “volume” knob in the channel rack as gain, since it’s pre-fader.
Truly scientist of DAW 🔥🔥
FL : circular compensation
Ableton : * here's God equation
Oh my god it’s him. He’s back. Oh my god
What did I tell you guys.................. circular panning law is evil, also its what causes the export freeze bug
Reminds me of a video I found a few weeks ago about mixing in stereo such that a mono down-mix still sounds right. Too complex to put in a comment, but the audible difference between a hard-panned and centred sound is an important aspect.
Isnt it the other way around, mixing in mono first till it sounds good then just add stereo afterwards
You're probably referring to the "how to mix in stereo without sucking in mono" series posted by FabFilter and made by Dan Worral. That gives you everything you need to know about stereo, mid-side, what is stereo and other things.
THe paning law is everywhere, even my audio interface has her own.
When I tried jukeblocks and generated EDM and drum and bass and put it into fl studio most of the sounds arent even there so I just hear a kick the whole time and nothing else
It doesn't generate any chords or melodies (yet), so the idea is to fill in the patterns with your own basslines/melodies/etc.
If you have a paid account you can add synths to the project files too, but you still need to write your own melodies (for now).
It's essentially an outline for a song that you fill in. It doesn't create the full song for you (yet...)
4:25 someone forgot to compile their LaTeX document.
Thank you for this, I now have a one more music nerd story no one want to hear at a party.
so this is why the volyme raises when you use stereo enhancer
I can hear this all incredibly clearly on my phone speaker.
That website is a pretty cool idea and it doesn't feel like cheating
"L thepa squirt" actually makes math sound fun.
Let’s talk about Ableton’s true panning next 👀
I thought everyone knew this. Read this back in FL 9, 14 years ago. Should make a video showing folks how to make their mixer channel EQ actually work, because you have to change another setting before it's doing what you think it's doing.
Now it's going to affect me mentally as i produce music and am aware of this
This is amazing
This is why beat producers make good beats
jukeblocks idea: AAF converter to project files for DAWs that don't support it. That will enable even more collaboration.
Make a hardcore piep kick using that sound NOW