Difference Between Panning Stereo Signal Recorded to Mono vs. Stereo track

Libertine Lush

New member
If you take a stereo signal, such as a synth (which is usually mono) that has been processed with a stereo effect, and wish to pan it, in what ways would the sound be different if this has been recorded to a mono vs. stereo track?

I understand (I think) from a fair amount of googling that when a stereo signal on a mono track is panned the volume in one channel is merely silenced, whereas in a stereo track one channel is actually being moved over into the other. In both cases, if you pan completely to the left, for example, would the resulting sound not be the same? I suspect there's something I'm overlooking or misunderstanding.

I've doing a lot of reading about whether instruments should be recorded as mono or stereo tracks, and while there is no consensus, there is definitely a strong bias towards recording as much as you can in mono, and also recording in stereo when the source is stereo.. Thus, I'd like to try to record in mono as often as I can, when appropriate.

Thank you for any help.
 
Hmm... interesting.
If I've understood it right, you're wondering if panning a stereo sound to the for instance left side will work in such a way that the right side is slowly silenced, or if it's also moved towards the left side (as if it would be summed to mono at the same time)?
I don't know how it works, but I'm curious about this too.

But I believe it the left and right should be summed together as the signal gets panned, otherwise you'd lose information that could affect the depth and richness.
I mean if you for instance panned an 8-voiced supersaw with maxed stereo spread towards the one side, and let's say that the opposite side is silenced - then you would almost completely lose 2 of the unison voices, and partly lose 2 more that are more towards the center, since they're on the side that gets silenced.

But no matter how it works you still shouldn't pan elements with stereo spread, but sum them to mono before they're panned instead - otherwise the panning will be vague and muddy.
 
If I've understood it right, you're wondering if panning a stereo sound to the for instance left side will work in such a way that the right side is slowly silenced, or if it's also moved towards the left side (as if it would be summed to mono at the same time)?

My question is a little different. From my understanding: a stereo signal recorded to mono will be summed for each channel, resulting in two identical channels. If that same signal is recorded to stereo, the channels will not be identical. Then if I pan both channels to the left in both instances, in the former, I would not be losing any unique sounds in the right channel since it's identical to the left, and in the latter, I would merge the unique sounds in the right channel to the left, so I wouldn't lose any unique sounds either. How then do the two differ?

But no matter how it works you still shouldn't pan elements with stereo spread, but sum them to mono before they're panned instead - otherwise the panning will be vague and muddy.

I think there may be something you said here that may reveal a mistaken notion of mine. I had thought, from some googled reading, that when you pan a stereo source all the way to one channel that it is being summed. Is being summed different from panning a stereo channel completely into the other? (Aside from that fact that when it is summed into mono, you'll still get sound from both channels.)
 
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