Pan Pot Calibration??

[zane]

Does anyone know if there is such a thing?
Has anyone had any issues w/ the pans not being "even"?

I've noticed that the pans on my 8080 G+ don't seem, shall we say, perfect.

If i run tone through a channel, and watch it on a meter, It's dead even up the middle, if I pan to the left, let's say its at -5db, then to the right it will be -1.5db (just as an example)
stacked up across the whole desk, w/ a large mix, that starts to throw things off pretty badly in terms of my left/right balance.

Worth noting, we have not yet done a full fader/vca/meter calibration. Were just waiting for the last faders to get cleaned, which they are now, so we'll probably get to this shortly. don't know if/what effect this will have, but just throwing it out there)

Anyone have any experience w/ this?

[jwhmca]

"There are presets located adjacent to the Stereo Pan control which are used
to set the channel output level to the main mix busses when panned to
centre. These are normally set to give a 4.5dB drop in level on any main
mix bus when the signal is panned from that bus to centre, but can, if
required, be used to set pan centre levels between -2 and -6dB. Please note
that these adjustments are interactive and should be repeated and checked"

[sintech]

Hi, you have 4 trim pots for the quad pan's destinations.

Thing is to get a channel that's out as far as you say on an extender, and have a little play with the LF and RF trimmers.

[zane]

Thanks guys

Andy-- where are these trim pots again??

[marcmozart]

They are on the Channel-motherboard, between the Pan-Pot and the Small Fader.

However, my G-console has the film pan option, and on these consoles there are no trims - instead you will find the film pan card mounted in the same place.

If in doubt, make a photo of one of your channels and post it here.

[zane]

yeah, i think the 4k has said trim pots, but not 8ks, at least not my one.

running theory now is that it could be caps

[sintech]

Maybe take a pic of the Pan area on the 8k

Good chance you'll have film pan if it's an 8k

[zane]

here's a bad iphone pic, but you get the idea

that said, upon further deep digging today, we have now come to the conclusion that whilst there very well may be something going on with the pan pot, it seems like there is DEFINITELY something going on at the patchbay. Particularly in the Mix Distribution (aka, Mix Outputs) row. When messing w/ the patch cables you can see the level jumping around a tiny bit. Also, the problem doesn't seem to be very reproducible, which tells me maybe its more physical/mechanical, and less electronic in nature.

Almost all testing that I've done has been sending from the console to a stereo track in pro tools and metering off said track. (Tried many sets of inputs to rule that out) When you just send a tone through a channel to the buss, it looks good. But as soon as we try to come out of desk > a record track, problems arise, though it seems like there really isn't much ryhme or reason to what/how much/left, right etc...Kind of leading me back to my patch point/patch bay wiring fault theory.

Going to have to take a day to pull that row and do some serious digging...

[sintech]

heheh.. we need to see the circuit board view of the pan area ;-)

[sintech]

This is the standard pan arrangement:

[marcmozart]

Here's some info on the film pan cards - if your channel looks different than sintech's picture, you might have these installed on your channels.

http://forum.sslmixed.com/index.php?topic=415.0

Also, I once identified ribbon cables as a source of a L/R imbalance:

http://forum.sslmixed.com/index.php?topic=301.msg1368#msg1368

[zane]

ha! um...yeah...probably would help to send the circuit board...

see attached. indeed i have the film pan.