Turns out early audio consoles with stereo didn’t have a pan knob. They had a pan switch. So choices were limited to left, right, or center (mono).

Wasn’t til later that the pan pot was invented allowing incremental panning and true stereo mixing.

The jump from mono to stereo made a lot of engineers’ heads spin. Then again, how many 100% perfect 5.1 albums have you heard?

Actually, I’ve listened to only three 5.1 remixes, all of them phenomenal albums to begin with, and their 5.1 jobs were pretty meh. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots came out pretty good, but mainly because they just fucked around and tried stuff.