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

It’s all about the timing of the soundwaves hitting each ear nanoseconds apart. Our brains are very good at audio-spatial recognition. But they can be fooled too and I’m sure there are some mathematics tricks in more modern 7:2 and 9:2 mixes.