| Though people sometimes refer to stereo balance controls as 'pan' controls -- they are not.
A stereo balance control leaves each channel hard-panned and controls the volume of the two channels with relation to each other.
A pan control controls the placement of a single channel or track in the stereo field.
You can put a pan control on each channel of a stereo pair -- but you must still allow for a way to control the volume level of each individual channel, as well. Without control of the volume of each channel, you don't have full control.
So for full control you either have to have independent level and pan controls for each channel of stereo (or each channel in surround, of course). Of course, that's effectively similar to two mono channels with their level and pan controls -- but by offering that kind of control in a stereo track/channel strip, you allow the ability to send yoked stereo sends to FX, auxes, etc.
[Or, in a stereo set up, you can have the same amount of control with a rather different interface by offering a stereo balance control and a width control. Which essentially controls the same parameters mapped to knobs differently.] |