Which drum pan do you prefer? Audience or Drummer Perspective?

Air Drumming is a huge thing. I think there are two types of non-musicians, the ones who don't notice or care about panning (if they even know how a drum set is even set up or even how to remotely play one) and ones who do because they air drum or air drums because they notice the small things. I think between the people who know a few things about music other than they like to listen to it and the musicians create the larger group/population than the ones who don't notice shit like that. So where most people will air drum and the rest don't care or have the OCD to care which perspective the drums are panned, please the air drummers and the performing musicians.

I do think that most producers will be inclined to go for audience perspective because they aren't a playing part of the band, their job is to listen to the band and capture the essence of the recordings from their perspective (audience).

because weird things going on with the stereo imaging make me actually feel physically uncomfortable. albums with hi-hats in the right speaker make me feel weird

Extremely uncomfortable. It feels like trying to write left handed or just picking something up or holding something with your left hand (if you are right handed), even if your not imagining yourself air drumming along, you still get that weird, your using the wring hand feeling.
 
DRUMMER. And if it's a left-handed drummer, audience so that it sounds like right-handed drummer perspective :lol:
 
Drummers perspective, which ever way they play - though I hate doing it with left handed kits. The only possible exception is if the drummer uses two sets of hi-hats as having an open set one side and closed the other sounds horrible, so I'd tend to pan them closer to the centre than normal. My problem with putting hi-hats on the right is that in most people (men especially) the right ear is dominant - if you hear two things at once, you normally pay attention to what you're hearing on the right side - so having the hi-hats that side can be really distracting.

Not sure I agree with Fragle, I'm sure the hi-hats are on the left on almost every CD I own - I just checked the 30-odd CDs on my desk all the ones that are panned are on the left. Almost centred is surprisingly common too on non-metal stuff.

Steve
 
I just did a rough sample of some music (mostly newer and some random stuff) and found the following:

Drummers Perspective:

5 Finger Death Punch - The Way Of The Fist
A Day To Remember - Homesick
August Burns Red - Constellations
Avenged Sevenfold - Avenged Sevenfold
Bleeding Through -Declaration
Bullet For My Valentine - Scream Aim Fire
Bury Your Dead - Bury Your Dead
Cannibal Corpse - Kill
DevilDriver - Pray For Villains
Divine Heresy - Bleed The Fifth
Dope - No Regrets
For The Fallen Dreams - Relentless
Gojira - The Way Of All Flesh
He Is Legend - It Hates You
Job For A Cowboy - Ruination
MyChildren MyBride - Unbreakable
Nickelback - Dark Horse
Oceano - Depths
Pain - Psalms Of Extinction
Protest The Hero - Fortress
Slipknot - All Hope Is Gone
Slowmotion Apocalypse - My Own Private Armageddon
Suicide Silence - No Time To Bleed
Suicide Silence - The Clensing
The Autumn Offering - Fear Will Cast No Shadow
The Black Dahlia Murder - Defloration
The Black Dahlia Murder - Nocturnal
Winds Of Plague - The Great Stone War


Audience Perspective:

Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Thunder God
Arch Enemy - Rise Of The Tyrant
At The Gates - Slaughter Of the Soul
Bring Me The Horizon - Suicide Season
Cannibal Corpse - Evisceration Plague
Carnifex - The Diseased and Poisoned
Children Of Bodom - Blooddrunk
Chimaira - The Infection
Cradle Of Fitlh - Godspeed On The Devil's Thunder
Darkest Hour - The Eternal Return
Emmure - The Respect Issue
In Flames - A Sense Of Purpose
Killswitch Engage - Killswitch Engage (2009)
One Way Mirror - One Way Mirror
Opeth - Watershed
Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain
Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire
Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
Rage Against The Machine - Renegades
Sentenced - Down
Shadows Fall - Retribution
Sonic Syndicate - Love and Other Disasters
Sonic Syndicate - Only Inhuman
The Confession - Requiem
The Offspring - Rise and Fall Rage and Grace
Veil Of May - The Common Man Collapse
Weezer - The Blue Album
With Blood Comes Cleansing - Horror
Within Temptation - The Silent Force



I may be mistaken on a few as they seemed to be panned closer to center and a lot of pro albums have the cymbals so thin and low that I can't really hear what's going on anyway.

In general, I think that Drummers perspective is a little morel likely to be heard. This makes me wonder if most mixers also pan the guitars accordingly.
 
Audience... and I'm a drummer. I've just gotten into that habit. Only once, when I recorded a really outstanding drummer, did I use drummer's perspective.
 
I just did a rough sample of some music (mostly newer and some random stuff) and found the following:

Drummers Perspective:

5 Finger Death Punch - The Way Of The Fist
A Day To Remember - Homesick
August Burns Red - Constellations
Avenged Sevenfold - Avenged Sevenfold
Bleeding Through -Declaration
Bullet For My Valentine - Scream Aim Fire
Bury Your Dead - Bury Your Dead
Cannibal Corpse - Kill
DevilDriver - Pray For Villains
Divine Heresy - Bleed The Fifth
Dope - No Regrets
For The Fallen Dreams - Relentless
Gojira - The Way Of All Flesh
He Is Legend - It Hates You
Job For A Cowboy - Ruination
MyChildren MyBride - Unbreakable
Nickelback - Dark Horse
Oceano - Depths
Pain - Psalms Of Extinction
Protest The Hero - Fortress
Slipknot - All Hope Is Gone
Slowmotion Apocalypse - My Own Private Armageddon
Suicide Silence - No Time To Bleed
Suicide Silence - The Clensing
The Autumn Offering - Fear Will Cast No Shadow
The Black Dahlia Murder - Defloration
The Black Dahlia Murder - Nocturnal
Winds Of Plague - The Great Stone War


Audience Perspective:

Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Thunder God
Arch Enemy - Rise Of The Tyrant
At The Gates - Slaughter Of the Soul
Bring Me The Horizon - Suicide Season
Cannibal Corpse - Evisceration Plague
Carnifex - The Diseased and Poisoned
Children Of Bodom - Blooddrunk
Chimaira - The Infection
Cradle Of Fitlh - Godspeed On The Devil's Thunder
Darkest Hour - The Eternal Return
Emmure - The Respect Issue
In Flames - A Sense Of Purpose
Killswitch Engage - Killswitch Engage (2009)
One Way Mirror - One Way Mirror
Opeth - Watershed
Ozzy Osbourne - Black Rain
Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire
Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
Rage Against The Machine - Renegades
Sentenced - Down
Shadows Fall - Retribution
Sonic Syndicate - Love and Other Disasters
Sonic Syndicate - Only Inhuman
The Confession - Requiem
The Offspring - Rise and Fall Rage and Grace
Veil Of May - The Common Man Collapse
Weezer - The Blue Album
With Blood Comes Cleansing - Horror
Within Temptation - The Silent Force



I may be mistaken on a few as they seemed to be panned closer to center and a lot of pro albums have the cymbals so thin and low that I can't really hear what's going on anyway.

In general, I think that Drummers perspective is a little morel likely to be heard. This makes me wonder if most mixers also pan the guitars accordingly.

Cool list man. I certainly need to give the ones of those in the list that I own a spin and listen out for the panning now.
 
How many of you that pan to drummers perspective have a recording space that doesn't allow you to see the drummer?
There is no window to the live room in ~90% of the spaces where I record.
I think it affects the way I pan drums.

I'm not sure but I think Andy (and other pros) most likely sees the drums facing him in ~90% of the recording sessions he does...
 
Audience perspective. Generally treating recording as a representation of a live performance ie on a stage.

Though I've noticed listening from the drummers persective (esp on headphones) can heavily change the way you 'interpret/visualise' a song. ie guitars to immediate left and right with singer in front.

not sure if that made sense haha
 
Audience, especially if you plan on being a live band. Audience perspective may sound weird to you but drummer perspective sounds weird to your audience! Every time I hear a really prevalent drummers perspective I think of a left handed drummer!
 
audience perspective - used to do drummers, but that feels wrong to me now.

the way i see it is the drummer is the only person that will be hearing it that way - everyone else has it audience perspective. also i guess the guys i look up to tend to pan audience. i dont mind swapping though if a band prefers it.
 
I'd be REAL surprised if anyone seeing a live band would be able to tell if the drums are panned at all in a live scenario. Most metal bands aren't playing huge clubs where they actually run a big stereo FOH mix (from what I've read/heard), so I tend to think that the "audience experience" is a moot point.

IMO when you see a band live and they do run a pretty big stereo spread, it actually kinda sucks, if you are to the side of the stage, you can almost completely miss the other guitarists stuff...This happened with the No Fear Energy tour I went to and it drove me nuts.