I'm almost afraid of asking this, because the level of discussion here seems very high and far beyond my understanding, but maybe someone is patient enough to help me out:
I'm currently creating a composing and mixing template in Cubase and Vienna Ensemble, with Vienna Studio reverbs as a send effect in Cubase. I'm now tweaking volume and position of the different instrument(group)s, and now I've come to consider the pan settings. There is the regular panpot with a setting from 100L to 100R (which is the part that I understand) and there is also this "space" pan setting thing just above the panpot that also seems to alter the position of the sound in some kind. What exactly does that setting do with the signal and how does it do it?
My understanding originally was that I can use it to limit the space of the instrument's reverb. But if that is so, then:
1. How exactly does it work? Effects are applied after the sound leaves VE, right? If yes, how does the reverb unit know about the "limited space setting"? Or am I getting the architecture all wrong?
2. Is it generally a good idea to use this to prevent instrument groups sound from washing into each other? From a realistic point of view, reverb bounces off from all directions, keeping it limited would therefore seem unnatural. So how is it intended to be used?
3. By accident I positioned my Glockenspiel in a curious way: I set the regular pan to 30R and the "space thing" to 70L-30L. The result being that it sounded far more distant. In this case I liked the outcome, because Glockenspiel always sounds too close anyway. But what exactly did happen here, is it possible that I found another way of controlling the dry/wet-ratio? Is this supposed to happen in a good mix, or is this something I shouldn't do?
Or am I completely wrong with my assumptions regarding this setting?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!