In sound engineering LCR panning is a technique of placing individual instruments in a mix dead center or far wide. That is, either panning audio tracks 100% on the left channel or 100% on the right channel. Hence, LCR panning is short for "Left-Center-Right."

Moving forward, some music producers and audio engineers prefer not to pan instruments using the LCR mixing approach, but to place instruments e.g. 0%, 15%, 24%, 33%, 38%, 50%, 62%, 66%, 76%, 84%, etc on whichever side everything sounds right, umm no pun intended.

Anyways, the reason why LCR panning may not work for some people is the issue of trying to address the stereo balance based on how things will sound on a pair of headphones. Because hard panning sometimes just doesn't cut it—everybody's taste is obviously quite different, you know.

In some cases, LCR panning works wonders by making a mix more clean and professional (which of course is subjective) due to the fact of reducing a muddy build-up on the center channel e.g. a stack of synths pads, vocals, strings, and keys panned dead center.

At the end of the day mixing music is a form of art, so the best approach to deal with panning instruments is to do what fits the music you are working on—you're gonna have to use your own ears for that.
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