Level and Time Panning of Phantom Images for Musical Sources

This study investigates the independent influences of interchannel level difference (ICLD) and interchannel time difference (ICTD) on the panning of 2-channel stereo phantom images for various musical sources. The results indicate that a level panning can perform robustly regardless of the spectral and temporal characteristics of source signals,whereas a time panning
is not suitable for a continuous source with a high fundamental frequency. Statistical differences between the data obtained for different sources are found to be insignificant, and from this
a unified set of ICLD and ICTD values for 10◦, 20◦, and 30◦ image positions are derived. Linear level and time panning functions for the two separate panning regions of 0◦–20◦ and
21◦–30◦ are further proposed, and their applicability to arbitrary loudspeaker base angle is also considered. These perceptual panning functions are expected to be more accurate than the
theoretical sine or tangent law in terms of matching between predicted and actually perceived image positions.