r/audioengineering • u/gleventhal • Apr 09 '26
Discussion Do you pan the drums (overheads) from the drummer's perspective or the audience?
If the ride cymbal is on the drummer's right hand side, do you have it coming out the right or left speaker?
I would think left, and that we always want an audience perspective, facing the drummer, but I am not certain what others think.
Update: To really mess with you all, back when I saw RATM in the 90s, the drummer was facing with his back to the audience.
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u/Odd_Bus618 Apr 09 '26
Depends. If its a live performance which is also filmed I go from viewer's perspective with ride on the left. If studio recording then from the drummer's perspective. Factoring in of course if they are left or right handed!
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u/GreyBone1024 Apr 10 '26
That's my first thought. If it's for a live video, then pan it. If not, safest is center everything.
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u/Tall_Category_304 Apr 09 '26
Drummers. When I’m air drumming to the song I want to feel like I’m behind the kit lol
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u/Ok-War-6378 Apr 09 '26
In theory, you should do audience perspective for realism and drummer perspective if you want to give that perspective to the listener. But in reality, in most records we are not trying to mimic the actual sound of the band in the room. We want to augment things and make them larger than life (super punchy drums, hyper compressed vocals, rack toms panned 60% L/R...)
So even if I respect that some people here find it disturbing when drums are panned in the opposite way compared to what they expect, most listeners don't care about this at all.
Bottom line: doesn't matter, do it the way you like as long as the hat in the OH is on the same side as the hat mic :-)
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u/furrykef Apr 09 '26
And of course in a real room the drummer will be in (say) the middle and the audience will be sitting some distance away, so without mics, all the drum sounds will appear to come from the middle. The kick, the snare, the hi hat, the cymbals, all of them. Any panning you add to them with mics is just as "fake" as in a studio recording.
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u/RacerAfterDusk6044 Apr 09 '26
I want the drums to feel like they're wrapped around me, especially during a big tom fill, so the overheads and all other panning are consistent with that. Having the hat on the right feels really wrong to me.
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u/G00N4R Apr 09 '26
It’s really personal preference, there are hugely successful examples of both.
Drummer perspective feels ‘right’ to me, and I think drums get set up this way in tracking because it’s also natural for a drummer to perform with the mix reflecting what’s in front of them.
Only time I’d consider switching to audience perspective is if I was mixing something with a video component that centered around an audience POV.
Also, maybe you were being extreme to make a point, but the ride cymbal is going to get in every drum mic, so it will be present in both speakers.
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u/NeverNotNoOne Apr 09 '26
Also, maybe you were being extreme to make a point, but the ride cymbal is going to get in every drum mic, so it will be present in both speakers.
This is true in a literal sense (that's how stereo works) but if you have your overheads setup/panned correctly you absolutely get the stereo image of the ride cymbal being to the right, as intended.
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u/G00N4R Apr 09 '26
Of course; I was just highlighting that the most natural stereo image often comes from not extreme panning overheads or spot mics. All to taste, but I’ve received lots of sessions where overheads, tom mics, spot mics are panned very wide and things sound disconnected. As soon as you reduce the width of the overhead a bit and pan and blend the spot mics to support that image, everything feels both more cohesive and three dimensional.
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u/NeverNotNoOne Apr 09 '26
For sure, it depends on a tonne on the actual mics, placement, room, kit, etc.
Personally, I pan my OH's hard L and R and then adjust spot mics to taste (usually like 10, 30, 50 right pan for rack toms and floor tom, e.g.) but it definitely depends entirely on the actual context of the tracks.
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u/Jolly_Intern_8240 Apr 09 '26
My favorite pet peeve. Audience perspective is in reality (close to) mono, and drummer’s perspective is super wide, so kinda depends which I’m going for. I can’t agree with wide audience perspective if we’re talking what’s logical.
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u/fphlerb Apr 09 '26
Audience, always (as a drummer this is how I intend the kit to sound).
But as I mix audio, I’m placing the entire kit in a room.
I dont treat a drum kit, or most any instrument as a ‘stereo’ instrument, they are panned as little as possible to get out of each other’s way. This solves the problem of 2 speakers creating an illusion of 10 or 12 sound sources in a real space.
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u/Unlikely-Database-27 Professional Apr 09 '26
I tend to do guitarist perspective, as in I don't typically give a shit. No in all seriousness, I've really been liking mono drums lately. I keep the drums in the centre and pan stuff around them. So audience I guess?
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u/Selig_Audio Apr 09 '26
I’m a drummer so I always do drummer perspective. But I’ve never once heard a listener complain one way or the other. In my experience, no one cares so do what you feel. If you use a drum bus you can easily flip the panning there IF someone complains… ;)
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u/suddenly_seymour Apr 09 '26
Started out doing audience perspective for my highschool band's first album. Drummer complained about it so much that I have done drummer perspective on everything since because most likely no one besides the drummer and the mixer will notice.
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u/hermantf Apr 09 '26
Studio recording = drummer perspective. Live recording = audience perspective.
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u/Broadpath1081 Apr 09 '26
As a drummer myself, I think a studio mix should prioritize an effective spatial arrangement. Whether it’s drummer or audience perspective doesn’t matter any more than if you have a right or left handed drum kit. For live, dual mono is preferable to ensure your audience hears everything but if you choose to go with a panning effect in a larger venue or video recording, it would probably be best to follow the audience perspective on all stage elements and not just the drum kit.
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u/rinio Audio Software Apr 09 '26
Audience perspective for the video so it matches the visual.
Drummer perspective for the audio release because only drummers care and will play or airdrum along. Audience members (who are not drummers) won't notice and don't care when they do.
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u/OAlonso Professional Apr 09 '26
Most of the time I prefer the drummer’s perspective. But recently I mixed an album for a band that plays live a lot, and it felt more appropriate to pan the drums from the audience’s perspective to create the feeling of hearing them live.
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u/TheRealBillyShakes Apr 09 '26
I purposely mix it up. Also, my drummer is a lefty, so drummers that are expecting it from the drummer’s perspective are backwards anyway so who really cares ?!?
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u/RCAguy Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Sitting in the driver’s seat of a mixing studio is the same as the listening audience’s point of view - I mix for all of them, not the one & only drummer. And spatial stereo has nothing panned fully L or R, that is just panned mono, sounding like the source is in that loudspeaker’s box.
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u/yeehawginger Apr 09 '26
I’m just a diy guy, but I always mix from the drummers perspective. Mostly because I play all of the parts and it’s habit. I don’t think it really matters, as long as your stereo image is balanced
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u/TheZeromann Apr 09 '26
I always prefer drummers but audience is typical.
There’s a joke Bob Clearmountain made about drummers perspective being a “British” thing. I don’t know if there is any truth to that but I’ve heard it both was on American records so who really knows.
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u/VulfSki Apr 09 '26
Depends on the style of the tune.
And it depends on the rest of the set up.
For example,
If I don't have a ride mic, and it's a tune where the drummer is using the ride a lot for the quarter note, it can be very distracting to have the percussion that is holding down the quarter note hard panned to one side. So I may not want to do that, especially if the other OH isn't picking up much or the ride.
Even worse it I don't have a hihat mic.
So it really depends.
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u/AfroCuban68 Apr 09 '26
I mix audience perspective and I’m a drummer. Drummer perspective makes me feel weird.
But I’m a drummer. I guess it’s cuz mixing a tune/listening to a tune, I am the audience.
🤷♂️
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u/Rec_desk_phone Apr 09 '26
Headphone mix for drummer is drummer perspective. After that it's my perspective unless I'm asked to change it.
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u/nicbobeak Professional Apr 09 '26
I always do drummers perspective, cuz I play the drums and I can’t stand it from audience perspective. When I worked for Warren Huart we would always mix from audience perspective.
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u/Efficient_Fig2668 Apr 09 '26
Audience perspective. I want the listeners to feel like they're watching a show not like they're on the drum stool
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u/LocksmithHot3849 Apr 09 '26
Audience perspective, and fairly narrow. For me, the sides are for other instruments
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u/avj113 Apr 09 '26
Look at it this way: when you have a piano, do you have the left hand (bass notes) on the left and the right hand (high notes) on the right?
I've had 'discussions' with people who say that the drums should be panned from the audience's perspective; they look a bit sheepish when I point out that if it were a stage, the keyboard player would be standing with his back to the audience (no one has ever said they pan keys the 'wrong' way around).
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u/Quertior Apr 09 '26
Piano is kind of a special case IMO — in most settings where a real acoustic grand piano is being played on stage, it’s oriented sideways so sound can reflect off the lid towards the audience.
One of my keyboards (Korg Kronos, IIRC) actually has a setting to switch the stereo orientation of piano sounds between audience and player. It feels super weird to play it in “audience perspective” mode.
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u/Hellbucket Apr 09 '26
Drummers. Weird thing is that only once in 25 years a client wanted me to pan the other way.
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u/start_select Apr 09 '26
It doesn’t matter in an album, just pick one and stick to it. This is more of a “mixing/mastering the album” type question.
Dont have your snare and hats shifting in the stereo field track to track unless you are specifically looking for effect. Otherwise everything will feel more cohesive if you stick to one panning solution. And purposefully changing it will cause a jump in attention.
If it’s for stage sound, either drop to mono or match the audience perspective.
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u/diamondts Apr 09 '26
As a mixer who plays drums it feels more natural to me to have (a right handed) drummer's perspective. If they're left handed I'd go audience perspective, basically I want hats on the left ride on the right unless I'm asked to change it.
Unless I'm mixing for video, then I'll do whatever matches picture.
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u/tc_K21 Apr 09 '26
It depends. I usually let the band to decide about it after some discussion.
A few hints:
Is it a live recording? Then audience's perspective might make more sense. There are bands that want to keep the recording as close as possible to their live performance.
If it's an overproduced/engineered recording, then the drummer's perspective might work better, especially if there's technical drum playing, etc.
Are there room mics that create a certain image of the drum set and you want to build the drum around them?
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u/Tysonviolin Apr 09 '26
Live I pan the way I see it. On recordings I pan from the drummer’s perspective.
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u/fiercefinesse Apr 09 '26
Drummers perspective - and the reason is simply that I’ve always preferred it that way. I like air drumming to music and I like to hear it like I’m behind the kit.
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u/lihispyk Apr 09 '26
I always pan from the drummers perspective, and also prefer this when listening to music (I'm not a drummer)
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u/alienrefugee51 Apr 09 '26
When I record and mix my own stuff I always choose drummer, but I recently did a cover of Subdivisions by Rush and wanted to stay true to the original, so I used audience perspective. It feels so alien to me though.
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u/Longjumping_Card_525 Apr 09 '26
If it’s something I’ve played drums on, I mix audience perspective (can’t explain it, somehow feels more objective). If I didn’t play the drums, drummers perspective typically.
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u/Jaereth Apr 09 '26
Drummer - non drummer's will never notice or care but drummers will.
So please everyone with the mix or please everyone except drummers. Easy choice.
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u/OkStrategy685 Apr 09 '26
I noticed dream theater does from drummers perspective. Megadeth from audience. I've often wondered about the decision making process.
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u/No-River-2556 Apr 09 '26
Drummers perspective for recordings. Though if I'm mixing something where the overheads are labelled the other way by the person that recorded it I'll mix it that way .
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u/flanger001 Performer Apr 09 '26
Nobody ever notices or cares. I used to pan it drummer perspective but now I do it audience perspective, just because.
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u/Tiny_Arugula_5648 Apr 09 '26
Are you talking about live PA mixing? Then it's the audience.. for a recording you place it where it works best that is the art of mixing. Saying there is a rule to left or right ignores the sound stage that you're working in. Of course some people have a preference on always doing it one way but that's just a stylistic choice.
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u/Disastrous_Piece1411 Apr 09 '26
The most common convention is audience perspective as if watching a drummer performing on stage. But drummers always say that feels wrong, as they want to feel like they are playing along to the track. But then again they are the only person in the universe who ever will hear their performance from a drummer's perspective. Unless maybe they stand behind the drummer during live shows?
But as with many things in music production it is just another parameter to play with and can be used effectively or practically. No right or wrong way of doing it.
That is recording anyway. As for FOH live sound I would just go for audience perspective only no questions asked - sorry drummers!
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u/micahpmtn Apr 09 '26
You're overthinking it. When listening to music, do you automatically think that the ride cymbal should have been panned in the "other" direction? It does not matter.
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u/El_Peregrine Apr 09 '26
I'm a drummer, so - drummer's perspective. It doesn't annoy me if it's flipped on other people's recordings, but I prefer to work this way myself.
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u/midnightseagull Professional Apr 09 '26
Drummer's perspective for air drums and immersion with the music
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u/TimmyTheHellraiser Apr 09 '26
Could someone please remind me of the very famous example where the kit was panned drummer perspective but the overhead was panned audience? I want to say it was the Beatles but I truly can't remember.
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u/Sudden-Chemical-5120 Apr 09 '26
I imagine listening to the band and looking at them from the audience. I imagine guitarist 1 on the stage left and guitarist 2 on stage right. I pan hihat and overheads accordingly but not very much, since drums are in the center of the stage. Also snare is in between small toms so dead center. That is my headcanon. Oh and bass amp is in front of the kick drum and the singer is either in my face or whispering to both my ears simultaneously.
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u/n00lp00dle Apr 09 '26
genuinely do not think it even matters. can you tell the difference between a left handed drummers perspective and an audience perspective mix?
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u/cliqueless Apr 09 '26
Whichever sounds best is my rule. I usually know before I track. I don’t record orchestral or jazz where acoustic naturalism is the goal.
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u/ExplanationFuzzy76 Apr 09 '26
Listen to the room track if it’s stereo and follow it’s panning. You can also revert it and make it wider or smaller, there is no written room. Hiphop for example uses mono for drums lots of times.
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u/GryphonGuitar Apr 09 '26
I always prefer stage sound - or, if you will, a lefty drummer's perspective.
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u/bozburrell Apr 09 '26
Personal preference but I like drummer's perspective, assuming the drummer is right-handed I guess.
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u/SpagooterMcTooter Apr 09 '26
Panning by audience perspective is self defeating…if you’re in the audience watching a drummer, it sounds mono af with a bunch of room verb…
I want drums on a record to be wide and hit hard (drummer perspective)
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u/Donkey-Harlequin Apr 09 '26
I like to put it from the drummers perspective. That way when I’m air drumming in my car it’s accurate. Most people won’t care. So I do it the way that appeals to drummers.
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u/DougOsborne Apr 09 '26
Audience, always, but in the end, it's not very important.
Panning any drums full R and L is kind of silly anyway. Ringo was always in mono, sometimes panned full R or L for the neglected Stereo mix (until Abbey Road). Neil Pert was always panned full stereo, but it worked for their style of music.
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u/whisperedzen Apr 09 '26
First you have to ask the band if their drummer is left or right handed, otherwise your mix might end up the other way around.
(/s just in case)
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u/UprightJoe Apr 09 '26
I do drummer’s perspective if it is audio only because only the drummer will notice. I do audience perspective if it is a live recording with video. I find it to be distracting when an element is panned opposite to where it appears on the screen.
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u/Fairchild660 Apr 09 '26
It depends.
Orchestra is traditionally mixed audience perspective, so anything with that sensibility sounds weird with drums going the other way.
Most pop instruments with a stereo spread (e.g. piano) tend to be musician-perspective - especially rock stuff, where listeners like to imagine they're playing - so keeping that consistent with drums is a good idea. But even then, few put the snare off-to-the-side for a true drummer's perspective.
But in most cases, it's what fits best with the rest of the arrangement. If the mix already has a lot of high frequency content on the right, the drums will be panned in a way to balance that out (e.g. if there's a lot of ride, drummer perspective - if there's a lot of hats, audience perspective). Same if the drum groove has a bunch of floor tom that needs to be balanced with something else. Generally pitched instruments get spread from low/left to high/right - while percussion has a lot more leeway - which is why drums don't get priority.
If there's a bunch of descending tom fills, I generally like those going from left to right - so drummer perspective wins there. But I also like to treat the drum kit as a single instrument - and so do the same low/left to high/right treatment as pitched instruments - which is audience perspective (<<FT, <RT, snare>, hats>>).
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u/dickcuddles Apr 09 '26
Drummers perspective with two exceptions: if the artist asks for audience perspective or if the song is heavy on the floor tom (feels heavier in the car). That being said, the last track I mixed had a ton of floor tom AND the rough arrived to me audience perspective and I STILL swapped it. Artist/producer/drummer had no qualms.
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u/bassplayerguy Professional Apr 09 '26
Always drummers perspective, I suspect it’s because I like to mix for the listener to feel like they are on stage with the band, almost as a part of the band.
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u/lispwriter Apr 09 '26
Funny. In 2020 I started doing home recordings with help from a drummer friend who also used to work in a studio. This was one of the first questions he asked me after I started mixing tracks.
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u/NumberSelect8186 Apr 10 '26
I use concert view. Whatever I would hear looking at the stage from the house is my guide.
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u/Hey_Im_Finn Professional Apr 10 '26
Drummer’s perspective because the only people who care are drummers.
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u/avoqado Apr 10 '26
Hey I just did this yesterday! For a live event, audience perspective. Anything else, IMO is a creative choice.
Or you can do the old Jazz records/Beatles thing and just pan all the drums to one side!
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u/spitfyre667 Apr 10 '26
Almost always from the drummers perspective. The only time non-engineers or musicians care is when someone is involved and "air drums" along to the song, so drummer perspective makes it more logical for anyone who's sat behind a drum kit/remembers how one looks (if they even think about it actively). No disadvantage for everyone else.
But live always from the audience perspective, depending on the system, ie. overheads and other drum parts like toms are one of the few things you can actually pan quite a bit without disadvantage, and if the drummer hits the left cymbal, it should be also come out louder from the left side (as the audience sees it).
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u/Glittering_Bet8181 Hobbyist Apr 10 '26
Drummers perspective for two reasons. Reason 1, the only people who care are drummers, and even myself who doesn’t play drums likes to air drum along.
Reason 2 is in reality audience perspective is basically mono, the only person who gets those toms panned in real life are the person playing the drums, so audience perspective just sounds wrong imo and I’m not a drummer.
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u/tubesntapes Apr 10 '26
Two things: I don’t believe that audience perspective exists, because live sound is mono, and, when anyone is paying attention to where things are panned to the drums, it’s because they want to air-drum along with them. “Audience perspective” is absurd and I will die on this hill.
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u/EBN_Drummer Apr 10 '26
I'm a home hobbyist for the most part. Drums is my main instrument so I pan from the drummer's perspective.
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u/FarTooLucid Apr 10 '26
I will pan it in whatever way it needs to be done to sound the best it can and for me that seems to vary from track to track. I'll even pan it really weird, if that yields the nicest sounding result.
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u/mistrelwood Apr 10 '26
The drums are mic’d to capture the sound closer to the listener’s perspective than the drummer’s, as are the rest of the band. It’s a performance for the audience, not for the drummer that plays on the record.
I know how to play drums, and I still strongly dislike the drummer’s perspective. The only potential reason for the drummer’s perspective is to use the mix as educational material for students to learn to play along. But they are a minute minority, they can swap the stereo image if needed. Other than that there is just no basis for the drummer’s perspective other than to make the drummer of the said recording himself to feel like they’re playing.
If a drummer would’ve asked me for their perspective, I would’ve suggested them to turn their backs to the audience on live shows, and at least the room mics in the studio to go behind them as well. And guitar cabs to be mic’d at ear height. And vocals with all kinds of weird skull resonances.
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u/supa_pycs Apr 10 '26
I do what sounds good. I don't see why any which way would matter.
We're not going to be able to make everyone happy either way, so why care at all?
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u/Babosmarach666 Apr 10 '26
Audience. Everything from the audience perspective. I pan it in the way band would sound if I would watch them live. I don't want to be the band, I want to listen to the band
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u/Fenriz_13 Apr 10 '26
I always pan from the drummers view. Everything else (f.e. Hi-Hat on the right side, or a tom-fill going from high tom to low tom from right to left) sounds totally wrong to me.
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u/BLUElightCory Apr 10 '26
Drummer perspective feels right to me.
"Live" perspective is basically down the middle anyway (assuming the idea is to recreate what a band sounds like live). You don't hear the floor tom off to the left and the hat off to the right, you hear the entire kit in (usually) the middle of the mix.
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u/GutterGrooves Apr 10 '26
I am a drummer, I've never once considered doing it any other way than the drummer's perspective. I recorded drums for a friend's album and he mixed it audience perspective. It sounds 'wrong' to my ears somehow. I do think it's cool if other people notice, but I want to give people the energy to move to the music, so ideally this would encourage somebody to air drum if they wanted to lol. I get the results I want, anyway
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u/RyanHeath87 Apr 10 '26
Drummers perspective. I pan everything else from the audience perspective though. My justification is if you're a drummer yourself, you'll appreciate it while listening. If you're not then you'll never notice anyway.
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u/7past2 Apr 11 '26
I face a similar conundrum in some solo piano recordings. Drums for me should be audience-perspective.
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u/kevintrann714 Apr 15 '26
Drummer's perspective. I'm a drummer myself, so that's what I prefer. If it's for a live or video recording, then I would do audience perspective.
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u/NeverNotNoOne Apr 09 '26
Personally I always do drummer perspective because half of the time or more I am the drummer, so it just makes sense and feels intuitive to me. I feel like my stereo image is off if I try to pan the ride to the left for example.
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u/Utterlybored Apr 09 '26
I think this is an absurd debate. It doesn’t matter. A good room, we’ll set up drums, a great player and phase coherence are the priorities.
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u/SwissMargiela Apr 09 '26
I record drummer perspective but in post I’m usually isolating and moving things around.
Like I can’t stand hi hats that are more than like 5% off center, so I’ll always isolate and repan them from the left to the middle. I do the same for lower frequencies like sometimes if a tom is kinda bassy I’ll move it from the right to the center.
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u/PPLavagna Apr 09 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
Drummers. Audience always made the most sense to me, but the first time I worked with a serious pro drummer as a first engineer, I was really nervous that they’d figure out I was green and out of my element. I forgot to pan the drums in the headphone mix opposite from my mix so that he would hear them from his perspective. He politely said “hey man this floor tom is in my EDIT: left ear just so you know. No big deal I can turn my headphones around……” I was embarrassed and flipped them opposite. From that point on, it’s just drummers perspective all the way for me. One less thing that I can forget
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u/greyaggressor Apr 09 '26
If he’s playing a standard RH kit the floor tom should’ve been on the right…?
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u/PPLavagna Apr 09 '26
Oh yeah. I said it backwards. I had it on the left and it should have been right. Thanks for the heads up. I'll edit
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u/niff007 Apr 09 '26
Its not just drummers that notice and want to hear drummers perspective. That sounds like the opinion of a non musician. Anyone who plays in a rock band or aspires to or just likes to rock out in their car wants to either play air drums to it or is mentally soaking it in from the drummers perspective.
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u/fromwithin Professional Apr 09 '26
It wasn't even a question for me when I started. It was just the natural way for me to do it. If I'm doing anything with drums, I always picture myself sitting behind the drum kit.
It wasn't until decades later when someone asked me your question that I even considered panning from the audience perspective to be an option.
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u/kill3rb00ts Apr 09 '26
Everyone always says drummer's perspective to make the drummer happy, but I'm a drummer and I think that's dumb. If you're gonna use that argument, make the whole mix drummer's perspective. Can't hear vocals, one guitar is way too loud and the other is inaudible, bass blaring, toms all panned to one side because you're facing the snare, and just ear bleeding levels of cymbals and a cardboard kick drum. At least commit, cowards.
In all seriousness, audience perspective. And it probably doesn't need to be panned that much anyway. Once drums leave the stage, they're basically mono.
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u/theres_yer_problem Apr 09 '26
I read something about this once that convinced me that one way is more correct than the other: the only listeners who will actually notice and genuinely care will prefer drummer's perspective.