You are overthinking it. Adjusting the relative volume of left and right is the definition of panning. There is no illusion. How do you expect some plugin to "actually move the audio signal itself" except to adjust the volumes?

i dont know.
1) what is the use for stereo panners out there? what task do they accomplish?
2) suppose i have a stereo track, ( all i know is a stereo track contains two separate L and R audio). Now when i pan (lets say to the extreme left). The R signal becomes null. So i can hear only the L signal from the L channel.

What i meant by "moving the audio signal" is. I want to move R signal too a bit to the left. thereby maintaining that stereo information, but coming from my "left side".
( i dont know if i explained it correctly ). Is that what stereo panners are for?

P.S : i know i can do it by breaking up the stereo track into two mono and panning them. But all i want ot know. Is there a shortcut?

Stereo panners actively move the sound back and forth between left and right, as far as I know.

Now you tell me it's a stereo track.

In Sony Vegas 6 you can choose from various types of panning/balancing. One of them is "Add Channels", so when you pan a stereo track you don't lose any information. If Sonar doesn't have that option then you need to split the track into two mono channels. Sometimes that's what I have to do when I want to narrow a stereo image.

audion00b, post: 373780 wrote: I was wondering, (im using sonar x1) if the "pan" knob in each channel is actually a balance knob that just manipulates the L/R volumes to create the illusion of panning?
If that is so..i want to use other Vst plugins to actually move the audio signal itself. what do you guys use?

Let's talk first about a mono signal being sent to a stereo output. A standard pan control takes the mono signal and splits it into two parts - sending a x% to the right and (100-x)% to the left. If you've seen a physical analog potentiometer used in the first mixing boards, this is a pretty natural way to operate. The modern digital boards/DAWs work the same way. The panning changes the perceived location of the mono signal in the stereo field. You don't really "move" any thing - just adjust the portions going to the two outputs.

Now if you have stereo inputs you can do two basic things to effect the perceived stereo field. (1) You can send the left in to the left out and the right in to the right out and then adjust the relative volume of the two signals. (I think this is the basic method used in most consumer stereo "balance" controls.) (2) You can treat the individual left and right inputs as the mono tracks above and send a portion of them to each of the outputs. (This is the standard option I get on a stereo input in PT.) Of course, the two methods can be combined.

I think this is basically what bouldersound is saying. I just thought I'd take a crack at it.

I'd forgotten about Pro Tools' stereo channel panning. One of the few things I like about that software.

I don't know about Sonar, but in Cubase there are three types of panning options:

Stereo Balance Panner (default)
Stereo Combined Panner
Stereo Dual Panner

The dual panner may be what you are looking for. Perhaps Sonar has similar options, I don't know...I don't use it.

Cheers :)