For me the panning stuff is more of a mixing thing than mastering and I wouldn't prefer to do panning in such a mathematical way.
I don't see it being so mathematical but I do agree it's a very rigid set up. The way I see what I was doing with the panning was setting up a field between 50% left and right with a 25% marker in the middle of them as a secondary station. I was going to start playing with 'free range' positioning, making one of the channels something other than the 50/25% standard I had going, just before bones replied.
Stereo field and spatial features are instrument specific for me. Some instruments must be pretty mono-ish and in the middle.
Yes I completely agree, certain 303ish sounds for me should come from a fixed point in the range, not just the middle, in my ears at least. Sometimes I like a good straight up middle bass, and at other times I want to smear it's frequencies across the panorama.
In my view the main goals of mastering are to increase the real and perceived loudness of the mix, while avoiding of distroying the important dynamics of the music, to achieve clarity and cohesion.
This is the exact philosophy that I am trying to approach this with, so check...
Most essential tools; a low cut filter and a brickwall limiter. If the mixing is done correctly you doesn't really need too much extra stuff.
For the sake of diagnostics could you give an example of how to use both of these in a mastering situation?
But there are two main routes to do mastering. One way is to do it on the final mix, on a single or a quasi-single stereo [audio] track and the other way is to do it in cohesion with the mixing simultaneously through the whole process of making a song. The latter is requiring basically the same guy(s), the musicians to be good at mastering too. It's the modernest less classical method, but I know many big name pros who'd hate not to do 'in-house' mastering.
I believe the simultaneous method would serve me best, and I've already developed a few habits that would be right at home doing things that way.
@Teksonik - like I was mentioning before, I want to spread the instruments frequencies around not just move it here and there. Perhaps taking the bass's mid range and stacking it on or 'behind' something else off to the left while keeping the low and hi relatively in the same space. I should have explained that in my OP sorry for the confusion.
