This week in our Thursday weekly stream Ollie took a look at the Sound Particles Energy Panner a FREE VST all about panning!
The unique selling point of this VST is “Dynamic Based Panning….” what does that mean? Based on the threshold of your incoming audio signal you can make audio signals pan from left to right or from the center out to sides based on the Audios Volume.
To put the Energy Panner to the test, I started with a Funky 120 BPM drum sample and immediately within a few clicks it had given my drums a really interesting, groovy stereo movement. This gave me a lot of space for my big kick and snare samples to be layered on top with a lot of MONO presence whilst the top layer break sat on the sides.
The other mode Sound Particles Energy Panner has, is the SLIDING mode. This gives a constant movement to the sound in a given direction, either around the stereo field or in a spiral,both clockwise or anti clockwise. In Sliding mode the Threshold controls the speed of movement along the given path., This was GREAT for adding movement to pads and synth layers, especially useful for eerie atmosphere and intro sections! Energy Panner eared its RED badge ( Ableton Workflow Folder) and found its place in my FX toolkit!
Lastly the side-chain mode, our goal was to get the Bass to move away from the mid and out to the sides when the thick mid ( mono) kick drum sample hit. This isn’t quite the result I achieved. instead all side information was gone until the kick drum triggered the side-chain. this was easy to switch with the “invert” button, but still not quite what we had in mind, now the side information ducked when the kick triggered the side-chain.
I’m not sure if our initial vision is possible with the Energy Panner, some more research time will be needed!
I wasn’t able to test the 5.1 or 7.1 Dolby Atmos settings, but with the limited control I did have, I was impressed with everything this little VST can do!
Overall a simple GUI with everything you need on the one screen. An easy to adjust threshold/ attack and release with a decent representation of what is going on in the central ” DOME”. I did find myself clicking this “Dome” and wanting a bit more ” tactile” feedback. Aiming for a particular sound from the Energy Panner was a little bit difficult too, but as a fun creative tool, to add some interesting stereo movement Sound Particles Energy Panner definitely offers than a traditional AUTOPAN and if its still free definitely add it to your VST collection!
Words by Ollie Barron (Stonx and Stonx Music Co-Founder)
