Auto Pan: choose stereo motion or tremolo

Follow the level, not a travelling object

Start on headphones or a stereo pair at a comfortable level. The eight-second example is original synthetic material: a shared tone plus another tone with opposite polarity between the channels. After four seconds the shared component becomes quieter. That deliberate change helps expose stereo behaviour, but it is part of the source, not an Auto Pan action. Concentrate on the first four seconds before drawing conclusions about motion.

With Sine, Rate at 1 Hz, Phase at 180° and Amount at 65%, listen for alternating emphasis between left and right. Reduce Amount to zero, then bring it back. The oscillator changes each channel's gain; it does not transfer the left recording into the right speaker. Consequently, a stereo recording with different information on each side can change apparent tone as well as position.

Keep the rate; change the relationship

Set Phase to 0° without touching Rate. Both gains now rise and fall together: the useful cue is a shared dip in loudness rather than alternating speakers. This is tremolo. If the comparison feels too subtle, briefly raise Amount to 90%. Then return to 40–65% and decide whether the pulse supports the material or interrupts it.

Amount controls attenuation depth, not an equal-power pan law. At full depth an individual channel can reach silence; at zero depth it passes at unity. A modulated version can therefore seem quieter than its bypassed reference. Compare the shape of the movement first, rather than interpreting less average loudness as less impact. This panel has no separate output compensation control.

Try Phase near 90° as an intermediate relationship. You need not hear a neat position halfway between panning and tremolo: source correlation and the overlapping gain dips matter. If the centre feels unstable, reduce Amount before accelerating Rate. More speed usually makes an existing imbalance busier rather than solving it.

Give the pulse a shape

At Phase 0°, compare Sine with Triangle and Square. Sine gives rounded rises and falls; Triangle makes the gain ramps straighter; Square makes the level changes more abrupt. Judge the transition into each dip, not just how deep it goes. A square pulse can add rhythmic definition to sustained material, but it can also make a soft texture feel chopped. Back off Amount or return to Sine when the modulation becomes the only thing you notice.

Sync changes the Rate control from hertz to a duration in sixteenth notes. A display of 4/16 means a quarter-note cycle; 8/16 takes twice as long. It sets a tempo-derived frequency, not a promise that a particular peak restarts on every musical downbeat. Free Rate is useful when the movement should drift independently of the beat.

A slow-rate and mono reality check

TuttiDAW implements the right-channel phase offset with a delayed oscillator signal. Below 0.5 Hz that calculation limits the period used for the offset, so 180° no longer guarantees a true half-cycle separation. Use 1 Hz for the clean comparison above; judge very slow settings by their result rather than the angle alone.

Finally, check the result in mono where your monitoring setup allows. This source already contains opposite-polarity information, especially in its second half, so some cancellation exists before processing. Compare bypassed and active versions over the same section. Do not mistake that source property for a fault you can cure with more modulation.