Feel Your Mix Move Around You: Exploring HALO 3D PAN

IntheBox Blog

5 days ago

Hey Plugheads!
You know how much I love tools that bring mixes to life — and today I’m super excited to share something that does exactly that: HALO 3D PAN.
It’s more than just a panning plugin; it’s like putting your listeners right inside your music, letting sounds swirl around them in three dimensions. Let’s break down why this little gem might be the next secret weapon in your DAW.

🎧 What Makes HALO 3D PAN Special?

Imagine taking any stereo track and making it feel like it’s literally circling around your head. That’s what HALO 3D PAN does, using binaural impulse responses to simulate realistic movement and depth — perfect for headphones.

It gives you four simple but powerful controls:

Azimuth – moves the sound around your head horizontally.
Elevation – places it higher or lower above you.
Width – spreads the stereo input to make it feel wider or narrower.
Focus – lets you blend between fully spatialized 3D sound and classic stereo panning.

Together, they make it ridiculously easy to turn a flat mix into something immersive and alive.

🧪 How It Actually Works

Under the hood, HALO 3D PAN uses something called HRTF (head-related transfer function) filters. Basically, it takes your sound and “re-records” it through virtual ears (built from real measurements of a dummy head, the Neumann KU100).
Then, it uses super-efficient FFT processing (via the PFFFT library) to do all of this in real time with very low latency — usually around half an FFT block (about 64 samples).

The result? Sounds don’t just move left and right — they can rise above, dip below, and wrap around the listener, making every track feel bigger and more dimensional.

🖱️ The Coolest Part: The 3D Interface

One of my favorite things? The plugin’s GUI isn’t flat and boring. Instead, it has a real-time raymarched 3D interface.

You click and drag directly in a virtual space to move your sound.
When you hover over controls, a little tooltip shows the parameter and current value.
The outgoing audio spectrum dances above the azimuth knob.

It feels more like playing with an instrument than turning knobs — and I love that.

💡 Tips I’ve Found Useful

From my own testing:

Automate the azimuth knob with a saw wave for a full 360° spin effect — the sound literally circles your head.
Keeping elevation at 0° helps maintain width; too high can narrow the stereo field.
Just adding width from 0% to ~25% can instantly add depth.
Double-click to reset any parameter quickly.
Using 100% spatialization gives the strongest 3D feel — but watch out for weird phase issues at partial settings.