Brightness Panner 2: Frequency-Driven Stereo Panning Plugin by Sound Particles

The core idea is that movement comes from the audio. You can set the plugin to react to the brightness of the signal, to the pitch of the sound, or directly to MIDI notes. Brightness suits sounds with a changing timbre, such as a filter sweep or a vocal whose color shifts across a phrase. Pitch suits melodic lines, where each note can send the sound to a different position. MIDI mode lets a performance drive the mix in real time.

Two panning modes cover different needs. Pan Mode gives a ping-pong style effect, while Sliding Mode creates continuous movement along a defined path. Movement can head toward a single point, follow a custom path or rotate in a circle, and absolute control lets you fine-tune when and how fast the response happens.

Brightness Panner 2 includes a built-in mixer, so you can balance each output channel without switching back to your DAW mixer. The Virtual Center option reserves the center channel for a lead vocal and redistributes the other content to left and right. Visualization is available in Circular, Polygon and Room views, and you can define custom speaker setups by channel count, azimuth, elevation and LFE position.

A sidechain input lets one sound's panning react to another track's brightness, for example a saxophone responding to the brightness of a lead vocal. The Random Dice generates preset combinations with one click, which is useful as a starting point.