Pan Spread - Quick Question

Pan Spread - Quick Question
« on: December 18, 2020, 02:52:46 PM »
Hey OB-6 owners. I’ve noticed on my machine, on any poly patch, that pan spread doesn’t work completely as expected. Turning the control to max, I expect that each time a new voice is triggered, I should hear it fairly far panned, alternating right and left. What I actually hear with my OB-6, is that the expected behavior occurs for four triggers, then the following two triggers result in nearly (but not quite) center-panned voices. This pattern repeats in six trigger increments.

I’m wondering if this actually might be normal, having something to do with providing the center-panned voice when the synth is using odd numbers of voices in unison mode...

Anyway, I would be very appreciative if anyone could test this on their machine. It’s much easier to discern using headphones. Any ideas about why this might happen would be great too. Thanks!
« Last Edit: December 18, 2020, 02:56:46 PM by Zac Kyoti »

Re: Pan Spread - Quick Question
« Reply #1 on: December 19, 2020, 11:10:18 AM »
OB6 owner here. The pan spread is actually that: spread. As in a peacock's tail. Some voices are far left and right, and some are in between.

From what I can surmise, with the PAN SPREAD knob fully clockwise:

Voice 1 panned left about 10%
Voice 2 panned right about 10%
Voice 3 panned left about 60%
Voice 4 panned right about 60%
Voice 5 panned left 100%
Voice 6 panned right 100%

And the synth seems to be using roundabout polyphony voice allocation.
Oberheim OB-X8, Minimoog D (vintage), OB6 (Desktop), Oberheim Matrix-6 (MIDI Controller for OB6), VC340

Re: Pan Spread - Quick Question
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2020, 02:45:49 PM »
Such an excellent explanation, thank you - I think my mistake was thinking that the knob would increase the voice panning as it was turned up, but with each voice having the same percentage of pan, that would effectively give a non-chorded melody line a sort of simple ping-pong effect. The behavior you describe makes a ton of sense in terms of playing chords though.

Re: Pan Spread - Quick Question
« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2020, 08:44:11 PM »
Such an excellent explanation, thank you - I think my mistake was thinking that the knob would increase the voice panning as it was turned up, but with each voice having the same percentage of pan, that would effectively give a non-chorded melody line a sort of simple ping-pong effect. The behavior you describe makes a ton of sense in terms of playing chords though.

You're welcome. I also wish that we could have had access to individual panning of the voices (à la Oberheim) on the OB6, but alas not.
Oberheim OB-X8, Minimoog D (vintage), OB6 (Desktop), Oberheim Matrix-6 (MIDI Controller for OB6), VC340