I laid out this analogy once to explain panning and it may or may not fit this situation, but I'll do it anyway.

Imagine you are on a baseball diamond standing on home plate, and all the players are directly behind the pitcher. You can only see 1 player. That is center channel.

Now have the shortstop and 2nd baseman go to their position. Now you can see 3 players.
Then do the same for the 1st and 3rd basemen. Now you see 5 players.
Then have the left and right fielders go to position. Now you can see 7.

Looking at it now, you have 2 players panned hard left and right, 2 slightly toward center, 2 slightly more toward center, and there are 3 in a row. The catcher, pitcher and center fielder are vocals, bass and drums, right down the middle. The instruments are then 3 each left and right at different positions on the field, or degrees of panning.

So to the OP, since drum kits are many instruments at different degrees of placement from the listener's ears, they should be stereo. So things like tom tom sweeps can pan from side to side.

Last edited by eddie1261; 01/17/22 04:20 PM.
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