With a little bit of EQ and the right panning you can make your mixes sound almost 3D, that is left, right, forwards and backwards.
Here is the tip… Kick drums, Snare drums, Bass guitars & Lead Vocals should be centre positioned in the mix (dead centre). These parts share the energy and focus of the song.
Keyboards, Lead and Rhythm Guitars, Orchestra and Backing Vocals need to be moved out of the centre so as not to crowd the above mentioned (be careful with your volume levels when you do this otherwise you could end up unbalancing the mix to one side over the other)
The panned parts will now be able to find their own space and create a very nice stereo field for your listener.
Now after you have mixed the volume levels and the panning, you can start to play with pushing certain parts backwards or forwards in the mix to create the depth.
To achieve that do this little trick…
Take the brightness off the sound (12khz – 20khz) and add a bit of reverb to push it back in the mix and do the reverse to bring it forward. (when doing this try to avoid touching the volume levels as you will want to keep the pressure in the mix that you had already mixed it to)
That’s it! …Now you can move a part to any point in sound sphere and that combined with the other mix points will give your listener the impression of space & depth.