- Continuous panning has been a common mixing technique since the earliest days of stereo. The movement of a sound, in contrast to its static placement within the stereo field, provides an extra point of dynamic interest. However, manual sweeping of pan pots during mixdown is fiddly, tiring and requires an extra pair of hands on the desk. Hardware signal processors, such as the Drawmer M500 (which, along with the A&D PanScan, was the inspiration for PanStation) made easy work of continuous panning, offering a greater level of control as well as the ability to precisely sync to tempo. These "Auto-Panners" use offset LFOs to modulate the amplitude of the left and right channels, with the user able to control depth, rate and wave shape. In most cases, the Offset can be nullified so that the left and right channels move together, creating tremolo effects.
There is now a range of auto-panning plug-ins on the market, from the very basic to the more fully-featured. Panstation by Audio Damage is intended as a high-end solution, or as the manual puts it, "the most sophisticated auto-panner/tremolo plug-in there is." In this respect, its nearest rival is probably PanMan by Sound Toys, which has a largely similar feature set but, crucially, costs over four times as much, putting it into a different bracket and making direct comparisons difficult. As a Logic user, I'm accustomed to reaching for the native Tremolo plug-in for all my auto-panning needs, and I was pleased to discover significant additional functionality within Panstation, most notably with regard to the triggering of panning effects.
Panstation is installed in VST and/or AudioUnit formats, and responds to MIDI Note and Control data; in Logic, using this functionality involves connecting Panstation to an Instrument channel and routing audio in via a sidechain (remembering to disconnect the output of the "target" audio's channel).
The interface is simple and intuitive, with two rows of controls—which can be very easily assigned to MIDI continuous controllers—various dropdown menus, and meters showing Input, LFO Activity and Output (although I imagine that most users will only be concerned with the red LFO Activity meter—and even that becomes visually exhausting at higher LFO speeds!). The bottom row of controls only becomes active when selecting an appropriate Trigger Source.
Users can adjust LFO Depth and Rate, Offset (which controls the phase relationship between the two LFOs: setting this to 0 or 360 produces a tremolo effect), Bias (which weights the effect anywhere from hard left to hard right) and Phase (which controls the point in the LFO cycle at which the effect starts when triggered; this is very useful for fine tuning the effect to work with rhythmic material). The LFO can be free-running, or synced to the host tempo at rates between 2 bars per cycle to 1/32nd note per cycle. A small but very useful feature of the plug-in is its Sum Input, which folds a stereo input signal into mono, preventing parts of the signal which may already be panned from being lost once Panstation is active.
These features form the essence of Panstation, or indeed any self-respecting auto-panner; the particular strengths of this plug-in lie in its range of LFO waveforms and trigger/envelope options. Alongside the standard square, sine and triangle waves are much more interesting variations, each producing a distinctive result. The characteristics of the waveform can be shaped to an extent via the Pan Law menu, which governs the loudness of a signal relative to its position within the stereo field. For example, with the M500 law selected, sound gets louder the further it moves away from centre, lending extra emphasis to the effect. This is a very worthwhile feature, and best explored in the context of a full mix.
As well as the default Free operation, whereby the effect runs constantly, there are a number of Trigger Source modes which significantly expand the creative uses of the plug-in. In Audio mode, Panstation only engages once the incoming signal exceeds a Threshold level; in Note Trig mode, activity is triggered by any incoming MIDI note. These modes are accompanied by a Trigger Counter, whereby Panstation will only engage once a number of triggers (up to 16) have been received. I found Note Trig to be the most useful and precise mode, although due to the way MIDI-controlled effects are configured in Logic, the trigger counter became somewhat redundant. Nonetheless I can appreciate its value to users of other DAWs.
Once triggered, the effect runs through an envelope, and users can set Attack, Trig and Decay times, which affect the intensity and duration of the effect's activity. This is a powerful feature which produces dramatic differences in the way the plug-in responds, and allows the user a great deal of control. I did have a couple of minor gripes, however, concerning the envelope. In Note Trig mode I found myself wanting the effect to remain active until I released the note; with Host Sync enabled, it would be good to have the option of setting Trig Time—if not Attack and Decay—to a musical value (i.e. beats/bars).
Beyond its use as an auto-panner/tremolo effect, Panstation can be used to dynamically set a pan position using Note Position mode, whereby incoming note messages are interpreted as control data. C3 sets the plug-in to centre, while playing lower or higher notes moves the sound left and right respectively. This may be the least useful of Panstation's features—the same result could be easily achieved using automation—but I found that the use of MIDI notes allowed for a more spontaneous, performance-based approach, and was a lot more fun. This mode uses the "full" keyboard range of C-2 to G8, and it would be sensible to be able to restrict this range when using smaller keyboards.
Panstation is an elegant solution to auto-panning. It's simple to use, has a rich feature set and is priced extremely competitively, making it a tool which demands serious consideration by users of any DAW. For existing users of Logic's Tremolo, the waveforms and triggering modes justify the asking price, and I will certainly be adopting it as my new auto-panner of choice.
Ratings
Cost: 5/5
Sound: 3/5
Versatility: 3/5
Ease of use: 4/5