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

We get lots of neat toys like this advanced panning tool here (Which is free and you can try out yourself!). It’s like a regular pan tool that lets you place the audio left to right but can also alter it to make you perceive it as coming from behind, above, etc. [https://www.dear-reality.com/products/dearvr-micro](https://www.dear-reality.com/products/dearvr-micro). As for layering sounds behind each other, it’s mostly balancing each audio element’s gain right as well as creatively applying reverb to give them a sense of physical space.