Do You Use the Onboard Effects on Your Digital Keyboard?

[BbAltered]

Hello. I am wondering if keys players here use the onboard effects on their digital keyboards when playing thru a PA system.

 

I use a Nord Electro 5D. Each "patch" uses onboard effects. I (too often) run into problems when patching into a PA system, mostly with the reverb. If the sound guy is not "on point", I get an altered sound in my monitor. Sometimes what happens is the sound guy adds the house reverb to the keys channel. Sometimes, the sound guy mutes (or omits entirely) one channel of the stereo signal I send, and this messes with what I hear in the monitor. On a couple of occasions, the house sound guy phase inverted one of the keyboard channels, and I got a messed up signal in my monitor.

 

Perhaps the better question to ask is how do you get the sound guy to get the proper sound of your keys (the sound you need/expect) into your monitor? If the standard answer is "just talk to the sound guy", then the question becomes what do you do when the sound guy ignores (or fails to understand) what you have to say to them?

[Old No7]

"...what do you do when the sound guy ignores (or fails to understand) what you have to say to them?"

I find that high voltage at low wattage (cattle prod) works the best.

 

Old No7

 

[Stokely]

I don't often deal with sound guys (almost all gigs we do our own sound)...when I do, I keep things as simple as possible. I usually bring my own powered monitor to supplement any wedges they provide.

 

If he is adding 'verb to the out-front mix, that shouldn't get into anyone's monitor mix IMO...

 

As far as fx...yes, I use them, but for some venues I turn them way down. I have an Electro 6d and of course it's easy to adjust the 'verb, I normally play all the time using the 8 "live sets" so it remembers the 'verb I set. If the room is very live, as many of them unfortunately are, I dial back any 'verb.

 

I can't seem to get through to our guitarist that he should do the same. He uses the Ax8 and goes direct, it sounds GREAT but he puts too much reverb on IMO...and then since he uses a monitor for everything, including his guitar, he complains that he's not "cutting through". Well, reverb is a massive culprit for muddy mixes, both monitor and out front. If the band is playing in a room with concrete floors and isn't packed with people, that reverb is going to be added on to all the reflections of that room and it can be a mess. Not to mention, when invariably the manager says "you all need to turn down" then it's just that much more difficult to find clarity

 

--

now, ironically when I'm sitting here with the opinion of turn down the reverb, I'm also the one that is a bit peeved at Behringer if they follow through with plans to NOT add effects to their OB-xa clone. I'd only be using the sounds for live so again with the live rooms we often play I wouldn't want the fx on there anyway.....but I still want the option in 2020!

 

[MathOfInsects]

 

Perhaps the better question to ask is how do you get the sound guy to get the proper sound of your keys (the sound you need/expect) into your monitor? If the standard answer is "just talk to the sound guy", then the question becomes what do you do when the sound guy ignores (or fails to understand) what you have to say to them?

 

The primary answer is for us to be responsible for our own stage monitoring. I hate having my only reference be the house monitors, because I like to hear myself in different places in the mix for different songs.

 

As far as on-board effects, I start every patch dry and add whatever effect I need to get the sound I want. That rarely includes reverb, since the house IS reverb, but sometimes that washy effect is intentionally part of the "sound" of that patch.

 

For soundcheck, I turn my on-stage monitor off completely and listen to be sure it sounds like I intend through their speakers. I often ask or remind them to run me dry and as far as I know they do (although once the show starts it's out of our hands). Sometimes that process reveals to me that I am the one putting unintended effect on the sound, so win-win. Then I tell them I am turning my monitor on and they might have to pull me back a bit.

 

Most often the problem with keys out front is that soundmen run them too low, not too wet. I don't encounter stealth house effects too often. It's easier for them to run you dry and sounds bad when when don't.

[ajstan]

My band exclusively uses sound companies, whether we hire them or if they are provided by the venue. FOH is EQ'd to the venue and the sound tech uses my keys as-is and adjusts levels only, no additional effects or EQ.

 

I use a Key Largo to send my keys in stereo to both FOH and a Rolls PM55P mixer for my IEMs. The Rolls also receives a monitor feed with everything else from the main board.

 

Also, I use a Zoom Q2n-4K to record each gig so everyone can hear how they sound in the FOH mix, adjust accordingly, and communicate with the sound tech for future gigs.

[AnotherScott]

As far as on-board effects, I start every patch dry and add whatever effect I need to get the sound I want. That rarely includes reverb, since the house IS reverb, but sometimes that washy effect is intentionally part of the "sound" of that patch.

Bingo. I don't use reverb on my sounds except for occasional special effect purposes. So that eliminates the soundman issue mentioned in the OP. Because, yes, the purpose of reverb in general is to make it sound like you're in a bigger room, and at a gig, you ARE in a bigger room, you don't have to simulate it. In fact, in a lot of rooms, I wish there were LESS natural reverb. ;-) Other effects (phasing, chorus, etc.) are unlikely to conflict with anything that soundman does.

 

As for monitoring, this has another variable, in that some PAs/soundpeople will give you your sound with some house effects, and other times the monitors only get the dry signal (i.e. what's coming out of your board).

[Joe P]

On board effects I use include phaser, chorus, overdrive, delay, wah, EQ, maybe a couple of others. But not reverb. I use my mixer's reverb via the channel strip effect knob. I start off with little to no reverb, and rarely increase it but have cranked it once or twice. I run mono to the front and to my own monitor which I control via control room out of my mixer. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

[CEB]

Onboard digital effects in general have lower noise floors than anything offboard.

[EricBarker]

We primarily run our own sound. But in any case, I bring my own monitor, which is just ME. I really don't need to hear anyone else, as the drums and bass are excruciatingly loud from my corner of the stage, and I can hear the guitar and vocals good enough. I'm very happy with this, and find that if I'm relying on a sound guy for monitor level my stress level rises a bit.

 

As per effects? I'm mostly a laptop guy + organ. I usually turn the reverb off unless it's for really spacey effects. Even then, I usually turn the reverb way down from where I initially set it up at home. Reverb is the death of live performance. Delay is much more forgiving, but you gotta use it sparingly. Many hardware boards have dry outs, which would be a safe resort, but you may need reverb once in a while for spicy parts.

[cphollis]

Similar comments. I use the Nord on-board effects as they're decent, and you can store setting as part of a patch. I simply tell sound person to run me dry through the FOH as I have my own effects -- adjust levels and room EQ only please. I control my own stage monitor mix using the X Air application. Easy, peasy.

[CowboyNQ]

Like most posters here I run my own monitor, except on rare occasions.

 

I do use on-board FX and rightly or wrongly trust FOH sound engineer to ensure things sound as they should for the audience.

 

One band I"m in uses a different sound engineer in every town. The tech rider clearly outlines how each instrument should be dealt with. During sound check I wander over with a copy and confirm Soundy has read it.

[The Real MC]

I almost never use onboard effects, I prefer outboard. The house *IS* the reverb so I almost never use any reverb other than short ambience.

[BbAltered]

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting stuff. I should have said: in the normal course of things, the band runs it's own PA. I send the NE5D outs (stereo) to the board, and take an aux out (mono) with my keys, my voc, and the lead singers voc into my monitor (Yamaha DXR speaker). Having done this now for 3 years, we got it dialed in: I hear well using my monitor. Initially I told our sound guy that there was no need for verb on the keys, and over time we have worked out any other bugs that cropped up.

 

My problem these days is when we use the venue's sound system, or there is an outside company doing sound. I should start a separate thread of "idiot sound guys I have had to deal with" - there seems to be no end to the amount of stupidity and ignorance among the guys in my area who claim to know how to run a sound system.

 

In the future, I want to use in-ear monitoring, so that means getting a small mixer for the keys.

[ProfD]

My SV-1 has decent onboard FX that I'll use on EPs sometimes.

[mojkarma]

I always use onboard effects. And I don't use a lot of them. A littlebit of the eq, chorus, compressor, delay where needed and almost no reverb because I play live, mostly in big spaces and it is not needed. I don't see why the hassle these days with external equipment besides if it is much better than what is there internal. And in most cases it is not or doesn't make an audible difference.

[hardware]

I never use built in FX because I prefer Master MIDI Controllers and automated hardware FX.

And even then less is more.

If you have to add FX the sound to begin with, obviously needs treatment, so I just avoid Factory Brass and use BBB + Chris Hein Horns.

Only have a dozen sounds and a dozen articulations.

I prefer that over the instruments with thousands of sounds that miss the mark.

 

[J. Dan]

I always use onboard effects. I often have many splits and layers with effects designed specifically for each part. Everything is submixed in the keyboard itself and so,etimes delays are matched to tempo, for example. How's a sound guy going to put a delay part in one sound and not another (assuming he knows I want it there in the first place) when he's getting a submix? I've never had a sound guy put effects on my keyboards, so don't know what your guy is doing. Only problem I run into occasionally is they have a gate in the channel that's cutting things off, or they have a HP filter on it thinning out my sounds. I can tell if that's the case during sound check.

 

Many of the problems you hear probably have more to do with stereo vs mono. Collapsing to mono affects effects more than the basic sounds. Aux sends on a mixer are typically mono. Only way to maintain stereo image in the monitor is if there are 2 mixer channels panned hard left and right with a different aux send for each channel going to separate left and right monitors. Yet another reason why I just run mono. I set up my effects internally to sound the way I want them to sound in mono. Send mono, monitor mono, no surprises. Recording is a whole different thing. Then I record stereo and may keep some signature effects, but will often use the higher quality plugins for things like basic reverb, delay, and ambience/room effects.

[DanL]

I use the internal effects on all of my boards. I even run my Moog Phatty thru the external inputs on my Kronos and assign effects that way in one of the projects where my rig is those 2 boards.

 

As far as the monitoring thing, I always bring my own monitors. I run in stereo everywhere. Most of the rooms we play have stereo FOH. The only thing I get in the house monitor is vocals, acoustic guitars and maybe some kick, hat and bass depending on how big the stage is. I send a stereo pair to FOH and a separate stereo pair for sound effect samples.

 

In my other bands that play more of the bar/club circuit, I still run stereo. We run stereo mains in those bands as well. I take a monitor send from the board and run it thru one of the channels on my powered monitor to hear vocals etc.

 

About the only time I ever use a house provided monitor is if I'm doing a short 1 set show with a small rig.

[Mr. Nightime]

I use the onboard effects on my boards.

 

With the Yamaha, I generally use it the way it is set from the factory. I've never really seen any need to change them

 

The Hammond, I'll add some reverb, but usually not much. I am from the school that the best level for the effects is if you notice when they are NOT there.

 

Since the SK2 has a knob for the reverb, I'll adjust as needed. The only time it is really noticeable is on our version of David Bowie's "Let's Dance", and for that song I turn the reverb full on.

 

I do not use echo at all. Unless you've done like Dan and timed the echo to the tempo of the sound, and unless the tempo is completely locked in and does not breathe at all, it will sound terrible.

 

 

[WesG]

Leave reverb off. 99.99999% of the time you're harming the out-front mix instead of helping. The primary purpose for reverb in a digital piano is to sound good in the music store.

 

Other effects, I use the shit out of them!

[Bob L]

I use a little Behringer mixer for my keyboards. Main out from the mixer goes to the board for monitors and FOH. So just one signal for keyboards. I use effects like phasers, wah, etc. built into my digital piano but no reverb. When we leverage a sound man they get that one signal (and based on this thread I should tell the sound guy to run it "dry" or add a little reverb if needed .... ). The monitor out from my keyboard mixer goes into one channel of my in-ears so I control my keyboard monitor. The second channel of my in-ears is a monitor send from the PA. I request there be no keyboards in my mix from the PA so I can totally control the relative volume of keyboards to "everything else". This has worked quite well for me. I no longer bring any amplification to gigs. It does mean I have to trust the sound person to do the right thing. For one project where I do a fair amount of synth bass I do instruct the sounds guys to make sure keys have adequate bass and are running through the sub-woofers.

 

I run in mono (in a band setting, don't know that the nuance of stereo would make a difference).

 

This set up has worked well for me the past few years. I don't miss lugging my own amplification.

[EricBarker]

I always use onboard effects. I often have many splits and layers with effects designed specifically for each part. Everything is submixed in the keyboard itself and so,etimes delays are matched to tempo, for example. How's a sound guy going to put a delay part in one sound and not another (assuming he knows I want it there in the first place) when he's getting a submix?

^ THIS

 

Unless you've got a dedicated board for ONE tone, or some vintage gear that you're trying to get a specific workflow out of (like a Rhodes into a number of stomps), I can't imagine trying to use outboard effects. And why bother? You can pre-set your effects to match your patches beforehand, instead of having to change patches AND effects at the same time. And like J Dead, I do all kinds of splits and submix in the board, so no way can a sound guy control the relative volumes let alone put different effects on them.

 

Guitarists have one instrument, their "patches" all come from changing amp settings and effects, so it would make sense that they would be cool with a small variety of binary "on/off" effects. Keyboard is a totally different world, and guys used to playing/mixing guitars need to understand that. Furthermore, ya ever hear of the sound guy putting effects on a guitar channel? Of course not... why would they do it for keys?