hl1982 wrote:The way I understood it was that fully panning left and right is great for people in the middle of an audience, but those on the right hand side say, will only hear the right channel and none of the left.
My take on this when playing in small venues: If you play using only 1 output (L or R, what many prefer to the Mono mode because avoids the "unavoidable" phase cancellation in some samples), then all the audience hears exclusively that one channel. That is fine, but If you use stereo, many located near the centre will experience a better sound (but I can't imagine that will be any worse than the single channel method just mentioned, and it will stil be potentially better than the Mono mode). Note that a number of effects work best when fully pan-ed in stereo (rotary, chorus), too.
Those on the sides of the audience, they won't hear exclusively that channel (unless they have their heads inside the cabinet)
for two reasons: one is room reflections and people will end up hearing part of those too which help create some kind of spatial positioning, similar to when you go to a cinema or theatre and are not sitting in the middle). The other reason is that if you listen to a single channel, in the vast majority of samples there is also already an important amount of the "other" channel in the final output anyway. So for me is always (from 
to 
): stereo, one channel, mono.
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