When recording music, how do engineers make sounds come from top left, bottom right etc and how do they layer sounds behind each other?

Question

I cannot seem to wrap my head around this. I can understand how this would work when recording a live band, because the sound is already “mastered”. But I can’t seem to understand how it’s done when different tracks are recorded separately.

In: 13

Answer 1

Mixing engineers use tools like panning, compression, EQ, etc in order to make the independent tracks gel together. Additionally, a decent speaker setup will have a sub woofer at the bottom, medium sized speakers in the middle, and tweeters on top, allowing higher frequencies sounds to rest higher in space with lower frequencies down below