The JL Cooper AXOS Panner is a hardware panning controller designed to aid and automate surround sound production in Avid Pro Tools. In this show & tell review, Mike takes a look at the new JL Cooper AXOS surround panner.  Watch the video to see how he gets on with it.

More On The JL Cooper AXOS Surround Panner

Physically, the AXOS Panner is a compact free-standing control unit connected by a single USB cable to the DAW host.  Installation on my Mac Pro was very simple, I plugged it into a USB hub, and then checked that it showed up on the MIDI Page of the Audio MIDI Setup utility, that you will find in the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.

On Windows, when you plug it in for the first time, the Driver Installation Wizard will be triggered and you will need to install 2 drivers.

In Pro Tools open the Peripherals and go to the MIDI Controllers tab and select Surround Panner as the type and then the AXOS on the Send & Receive drop down menus ad click OK. That's it, after that it just works.

The control surface comprises a touch-sensitive joystick panner, five dual-function rotary encoders and a set of nine push-buttons. In addition to dynamic panning of the track(s) to which the AXOS Panner is assigned, the unit allows the mixer to adjust front and rear positioning, front-rear panning, LFE and C channel contributions, and front and rear divergence. Control of master volume and mute are also provided.

The AXOS panner is compatible with Pro Tools HD, 8,9, 10, 11 & 12. Note that non-HD versions of Pro Tools do not support surround sound formats.

AXOS And Other DAWs

The AXOS Panner doesn't just work with Pro Tools HD. When used with the appropriate JLCooper AXOS Panner plug-in, fully automated surround panning is available in Logic Pro X, Nuendo and Cubase. 

AXOS Panner Price

In the UK the JL Cooper AXOS panner is priced at £560 plus VAT and you can get it from our partner brand Aspen Media.