David,

thank you for this great article. It has really helped my 3D mixing.

Wow, thanks for the article!

This has dropped a few pennies that've been waiting to fall for a long time, thank you very much!

But I have a question regarding the pro's and cons of the two different signal paths you gave us. With the second setup you said it was much more like a mid/side setup in that it was entirely mono compatible, however this was also a disadvantage as it meant the information was lost when the mix was mono.

However, isn't this a far better choice than what will happen with the first signal path when it is summed to mono, because in that case the 3D information becomes classified by our brains as timbre information and thus the sound will sound horrible and phasey? There would be NO 3D information from the delays left to make this a worthwhile choice?

Plus if it's an instrument you want panned centre I don't understand the benefit of having slightly varying delay times between the left and right channels? Sure you can try to offset the Haas effect by playing with the levels but what is the benefit of this extra work?

Cheers,
Antman