How to get surround sound?

[VDAYBeatz]

Hey, I was wondering how all the big producers get the surround sound feel to their songs. It seems as though the instruments are coming from every direction instead of being in one place. I have played around with panning, yet I cant seem to get the surrounding feel to the extent of professional songs. Does anyone know how to do this?

[CLiMAX Dubstep]

you need to focus on the stereo width of your sounds, as well as panning, reverb and delay

These things will make your mixes "bigger" and "fuller"

depending on your DAW and what you are using for sound design, you can usually use a plug to widen a sound..

for example, in Massive VST you can use the Dimension expander, or for example, i use Ableton so I can use the Utility effect to set the width of a channel

Another tip would be to use reverb Send tracks for your percussion, sythns, etc

Those are just vague examples because i have no idea what you are working with or what music you are producing....

[MikeMo]

ping pong delays give a nice sense of space, so does increasing the pre-delay or early reflections on reverbs.

pan things the clash or compete in frequency opposite each other, like high hat hard left, and a china cymbal hard right. you have to be carful thought as you do not want to leave the center of your track open.

you can use panning automation to move things around in your mix, making it go from left to right.