Panning a stereo stem is easy. Panning a 7.1.4 bed, a stereo synth pad and a dialogue track inside one session, without your mix collapsing into mush? That's where most panners run out of road.
Sound Particles has just updated Energy Panner 2 and Brightness Panner 2, two plug-ins built to move sound around a space in ways a basic pan knob never will. Let's dive into what's new.
One Plug-In, Every Format From Stereo to Atmos
Input and output formats now range from plain stereo through to Dolby Atmos and up to sixth-order Ambisonics. That means one tool whether you're finishing a music mix, building a game soundscape or working on immersive post. If your project doesn't fit a standard layout, the new custom format layouts let you define your own by channel count, azimuth, elevation and LFE placement.
Independent Paths: Give Every Channel Its Own Journey
Each input channel now gets its own path with separate start and end points. Instead of treating a multichannel source as a single block, you can send different channels on different trajectories, so wide stereo material can open up and spread through the room in a way that feels deliberate rather than smeared.
A built-in mixer adds per-channel output level control inside the plug-in, so you can balance things without bouncing back out to the DAW.
Virtual Centre: Clear Space for the Lead
Virtual Centre redistributes centre-channel signal to the left and right. It's handy for cleaning up dialogue, or for opening up room in the middle of a mix when you want a lead vocal to sit properly.
Three Views, One New Engine
You can work in Circular, Polygon or Room views, depending on how you like to visualise your space. Under the hood, both plug-ins now run on the same engine as Sound Particles' Beat Panner, so behaviour should feel consistent across the family.
The Specs, In Plain English
- Formats: VST3, AU and AAX, so it fits Pro Tools, Logic and most other major DAWs.
- Operating systems: Windows 11 and macOS 13.3 or later.
- Channel support: stereo through Dolby Atmos and up to sixth-order Ambisonics.
- Custom layouts: define speaker layouts by channel count, azimuth, elevation and LFE placement.
- Per-channel paths: separate start and end points for every input channel.
If spatial audio is part of your workflow, or about to be, this update is worth a look. Shop Sound Particles at Koala Audio.
