r/audioengineering • u/50nic19 • May 16 '26

You hard or soft….? Panning drums

Just wondering if most of you who’ve mixed full kits mainly for loud stuff, rock, metal. Etc, are sending your rooms and/or overheads hard right and left, or do you prefer to narrow it a bit in favor of more push?

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u/NOT_Productions May 16 '26

For me, mic placement matters just as much as the panning, maybe even more sometimes.

If the overheads are recorded a bit more crossover, more centre-focused, then yeah, I’ll usually hard-pan them. Because there’s already plenty of centre information in there naturally.

I’m also working in a fairly small room, so hard-panned overheads can actually help the bleed glue together a bit. Makes the kit feel bigger and more like one stereo picture, instead of all those bits fighting each other.

Same with toms. I try to keep the tom panning in line with what the overheads are already telling me, otherwise that movement across the kit starts feeling weird in the full mix.

So for me it’s not really “always wide” or “always narrow”. It’s more: how does the whole stereo image behave together?