Panning a sound

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello. Is it possible to edit a file to make the sound pan across from one side of the audio field to the other? I have a stereo (wav) file of a train passing the listener but there is in fact very little side-to-side movement evident. I’d like to have it approach from (say) the left and cross over to the right.

I’ve tried splitting the two tracks, dropping the level of the first third of the left channel and the last third of the right, then recombining them, but though the result is something like what I’m after it seems a little crude, presumably because I can only change the level by a fixed amount and this makes the junctions very abrupt. Is there a better, more standard way, of achieving what I want?

Many thanks.

2

There are several panning plug-ins specifically for Audacity,
e.g. … https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Panning_.28LFO.29

[ They don’t do Doppler pitch shift though, as occurs with the real thing ]

3

You may find this topic helpful: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/simulating-the-doppler-effect/58989/1

4

Trebor, thanks. I’ll investigate.

Steve, I was grateful for all the information in my other thread. It’s nobody’s fault but mine that I didn’t have a great deal of success.

5

As you seem to be comfortable with splitting stereo tracks, I was going to suggest that you could do a fade out on one track and a fade in on the other. Of course you would also want to incorporate the sliding stretch that steve pointed you to…

6

Jademan, thanks for that. As it happens, the idea occurred to me just a short time ago and I tried it: the result’s not at all bad.

Encouraged by that success, I might have another go at the sliding stretch.