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  1. I two mono tracks for actors track that I want to pan left and right. Most software does it with "pan pots", increasing the sound level through some "pan law".

    In real life, if a sound comes from 1.30pm on a clock face (45 degrees to my right), it will reach my right ear slightly earlier than my left ear. I am looking for software that implements this time delay when panning. Does it exist?
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  2. Logically though, if you pan something right so it's coming from the right speaker and you're standing between them, the sound will reach your right ear before your left one anyway.

    I imagine applying a delay would result in phase cancellation unless the sound in question is panned completely left or right. If you had the same sound in both channels and they were panned centre and you applied a slight delay to one of them, it'd phase cancel with the other and produce a "phasing" effect. The same thing would happen if you applied a delay to one channel while panning a mono source, unless it's completely panned left or right, in which case I'm not sure what the benefit would be to applying a delay.
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  3. Logically though, if you pan something right so it's coming from the right speaker and you're standing between them, the sound will reach your right ear before your left one anyway.
    Yes, that's true and applies to all cases except headphones.

    I imagine applying a delay would result in phase cancellation unless the sound in question is panned completely left or right. If you had the same sound in both channels and they were panned centre and you applied a slight delay to one of them, it'd phase cancel with the other and produce a "phasing" effect.
    Yes, indeed. Today I learned about this phasing effect. I tested it with 5 and 10 ms; it does sound weird indeed. Furthermore, sometimes my soundtracks play on a mono speaker.

    So it's best to pan left and right as usual, leave the tracks as they are to avoid the phasing effect, and rely on left and right speaker to convey left and right panning.
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I made an offline processing software for this (called "Audition") in 1987, then worked up better again in 1992, and then tried to get it marketed in 95-96. The only company that responded to me then was Crystal River Engineering in SF, Cal. But I was so poor at the time I didn't take them up on their offer to meet in Cal.
    Year and a half later, they (now Aureal cuz they got bought out) come up with a $$ plug-in for ProTools that graphically maps it in real-time and uses the DSP to process online in realtime. They were probably working along similar lines given their history, but the gui and operation look an AWFUL LOT like my prototype. Not calling out, but I'm just saying...

    Anyway, there are 3D Audio & HRTF type plugins out there. You just have to know the terms to search for them.


    Scott
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  5. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    You want to use either headphones as output, or speakers with Inter-aural Crosstalk removal (e.g. Carver Sonic Holography, Polk SDA speakers, others). Otherwise the effort of doing Inter-aural time/phase differencing is wasted, as was mentioned.


    Scott
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  6. Thanks Scott! I read about the Head-Related Transfer Function and it sounds fascinating. I'll try this type of techniques when I have control of the sound system, which I don't for now (the videos are online).
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