There's tricks you can to with panning to give you some stereo width.

But I use it as a way to define a place for the element at hand. Coupled with width control (more mono), then i have different layers acting on the stereo field.

Panning just by itself is alright, but the problem with that is it's left biased towards one side.

Reverb, delay, echo sends really help balance things out . Also, having different elements on the opposite side of one panned instrument also helps bring balance to your mix.

I use all of the techniques quite extensively. At first i thought, i could just use a stereo widening tool on my whole track, but i quickly realized that i shouldn't touch the master at all until the mix is absolutely done.

I use reason, and the mixer channels have a built in width control, but you can only go to 100 percent. Which is fine, because i have to subtract some of that width any ways, very rarely do i have to make things wider.

That subtraction that happens allows more for the stereo effects to breath and be heard in the track. Like your reverb, delays, echos, phasers, chorus, flangers.

If you couple that with eq on your element and send side, you have a recipe for a pretty sweet mix.

This is a more fundamental approach than what some other people might say, but it's simple and easy to use and can lead to a better understanding of other things.

I don't mess with mid side processing, because one time i did that in ableton's eq, and i nearly threw up. It really fucked up my orientation and balance for a few minutes. good experiment, wouldn't not want to do it again voluntarily.

I also suggest you make your pan adjustments in the mixer. Unless you have some kind of capability, in reason it's called the combinator, to have a mixer before the main mixer. so then you can have different mixes, pannings, eq settings, effect sends, busses all before you hit the main channel. I know FL has that capability now with that one tool...the patcher i think? it's a little different, but you can do some pretty cool routing. It would be very intersting if you had a mixer board VST, as i described...

But i say yes, panning happens with any thing and every thing when it comes to music. Depending on how and where you use it is the decision you will have to make as you progress.

For me kick, bass and snare in the center, the rest I try to pan all over the place, so there is some nice diversity in the stereo field. More important thing, more in center it goes. So vocal or lead might be also in center, or like +-5. (Ableton's units.) ...and less important instruments/layers can be further away. (+- 10/17/30/40 ... depending on context). More you pan though, more important is to balance each panned element by another one on the other side. (I like when those two are different from each other.)

Duplicating elements and hard-panning them is nonsense. You still provide moreless the same sound to both ears, so even when stereoscope might show some nice pictures (due to random OSC phases), it's still pretty much mono.

This idea comes from rock and roll world, where they often have the guitarist play the backing powerchord track twice and then they hard-pan the recordings against each other. Difference is, that he's a human, so he made tiny mistakes on different places during both performances. Those differences assure different information for each ear, thus it sounds huge. So if you really need stupidly crazy big supersaw/lead/stab/whatever, you have to make sure they are different enough for each ear. So make different modulations, detune settings, even sime differences in note timing can help. ...but also, out of a listener perspective, please don't bother. These huge in your face sounds are kind of boring. Delicate diversified ballanced stereo field is imho much nicer to listen to.

I dont know why, but for some reason i feel that the panning in the fruity's sampler isnt panning that well as the ableton one. It could also be my headphone's (i use hd201... pretty cheap) but when it comes to panning with fl its just a pain for me. Might be offtopic but maybe someone else is experiencing the same issue..

Check pan laws of each daw.

Allright cool, i will take a look at this. thanks lads!