Direct Panning

Direct panners calculate speaker gains from source positions and write those gains directly to discrete output channels. Each active output corresponds to a speaker in the selected layout. The four plugins share a layout editor and preset language but use different gain laws.

Workflow

1. Choose Panner Layout, DBAP, LBAP, or VBAP, insert it on a track with enough input lanes and speaker-output channels, then select or design the physical speaker layout and confirm its active speaker count and channel order.
2. Route the active output lanes to the matching main speakers, directly or through a speaker-array utility chain, then begin playback.
3. Place the sources in the field and set their gain, mute, solo, and inside-source behavior.
4. Check motion across the entire array before adding downstream crossover, delay, or trim calibration.

Panner Family

• Panner Layout: selectable distance or cosine panning with built-in arrays, custom speaker layouts, and saved camera views.
• Panner DBAP: distance-based amplitude panning across the active speaker layout.
• Panner LBAP: layout-based panning for two- and three-dimensional speaker relationships.
• Panner VBAP: vector-base amplitude panning over valid speaker pairs or triplets.

Choosing Direct or Ambisonic Routing

Choose direct panning when the target speaker layout is known and the plugin should publish the final speaker feeds. Choose an Ambisonic Encoder when the spatial field should remain independent of the listening layout until a later decode stage.

Downstream Calibration

After a direct panner, use Speaker Array Utilities for main-speaker high-pass filtering, per-output delay, trim, mute, polarity, and subwoofer sends.