Hi, I'm a bit confused about panning in Special Edition. I see that there are two controls, one that looks like it treats the sound as a single point, the other more as a field. Which is the power panner? Should I use both, or just one? How to blend this with Garritan and East West? Can the "field" panner (power pan?) be used to represent a string section? So that, instead of a single point, you have a wider space, just as in an orchestra the strings sections take up more space than the solo instruments?
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Panning
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I assume you're using the Vienna Instruments Pro player? That has an all-in-one Power Panner which combines stereo width and left-right pan position in one rotary control. Using the mousewheel, you can reduce stereo width (shown as the dark area on the control) all the way down to mono - continue to turn the mousewheel, and the left and right are reversed (denoted by pink shaded area).
Once you've reduced the stereo width you can pan the instrument left and right in the normal way by dragging the control.
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I'm using whatever came with Vienna Special Edition 1. Is that the pro player? It has two different panners, the top one seems to relate to width, the bottom one to just left-right.
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Sounds like you're using the Vienna Ensemble host. As you say, the upper, fan-shaped control is stereo width and the lower one is left-right stereo balance. The latter simply turns one side of the stereo signal up or down, so when you pan an instrument extreme left you lose all the right hand signal - if the original signal was (say) 20 violins spread across the stereo field, panning them hard left means you hear only half the group.
The stereo width control enables you to pan instruments without losing half their signal. Reducing stereo width to a single point makes the signal mono, but you're still hearing 20 violins! So you can load violins, violas, cellos and basses, reduce each section's stereo width, then pan them across the stereo to simulate their real-life orchestral stage seating positions.
Some libraries (EWQLSO, for example) record sections and instruments 'in place', so cellos would appear to the right of the stereo picture. Personally, I prefer VSL's more flexible approach - record everything in proper, balanced stereo and let users figure out the panning! To blend different libraries, just use your ears and experiment till it sounds right. When determining pan positions, I recommend listening on headphones.
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Hey Conquer, thanks for a very informative response. I now understand panning. No wonder my violins sound anemic - they're panned to about 80% left, so they've lost almost half their members! (I wonder what the musician's guild would say about that?) So now I can start to experiment, with some real understanding of what I'm doing. It will still be a challenge to blend different libraries together, but at least I now know what I'm doing.