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What is your keyboard recording chain?


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Mine is one or two of my boards straight from the 1/4" unbalanced outs to the two pairs of combo inputs on my Resident Audio T4 thunderbolt interface, set to line level. Keys volume set to 95% or so, except on the Korg Krome, which is too hot and overloads the inputs even at the lowest gain setting on the interface if I turn the board volume all the way up. In the last two years I've started recording midi simultaneously for all keys tracks; if I need to I can go and clean up a note that was played too hard, or a slight timing issue, and then feed that midi track back to the keyboard and record pristine audio. Plus I have the midi track around if I ever need it; it captures the exact way I played the part originally.

 

As my recording system is down right now (no computer that works with my interface or midi), I've been using a Yamaha MG10XU mixer to send a stereo track to Cakewalk by Bandlab on a PC laptop that's used for non-music stuff. No midi capabilities so I'm just recording single stereo audio tracks per instrument. Again it's directly from the 1/4" outputs to the mixer stereo channels.

 

 

I've experimented with a y-cable that will split the stereo signal from cheaper keyboards' headphone outputs into left and right channels and that's worked okay. Naturally it's a very hot signal.

Yamaha: Motif XF8, MODX7, YS200, CVP-305, CLP-130, YPG-235, PSR-295, PSS-470 | Roland: Fantom 7, JV-1000

Kurzweil: PC3-76, PC4 (88) | Hammond: SK Pro 73 | Korg: Triton LE 76, N1R, X5DR | Emu: Proteus/1 | Casio: CT-370 | Novation: Launchkey 37 MK3 | Technics: WSA1R

Former: Emu Proformance Plus & Mo'Phatt, Korg Krome 61, Roland Fantom XR & JV-1010, Yamaha MX61, Behringer CAT

Assorted electric & acoustic guitars and electric basses | Roland TD-17 KVX | Alesis SamplePad Pro | Assorted organs, accordions, other instruments

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It's really great reading about everyone's recording setup. I have my synths all going through DI's and into a patchbay. I have a mixer to sum all the synths, but I have not been using it, it's been easier just to patch in the synth I want to use. I will either run them through an outboard preamp like the Pacifica or into the mic inputs of the UA Apollo using a preamp plugin.

 

For Rhodes or Wurli, I usually run through an Avalon U5 and split direct with an amp (or mic the speakers of the Wurli)

 

I still mic up the Kawai GS40 on occasion, but I'm usually too lazy and just use a plug-in.

 

The Leslie 122 still gets mic'ed up though.

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Um, that looks like something a bit different than a microphone (the choice of colour doesn't help, but I do like the gender stereotype reversal involved).

Eugenio Upright, 60th Anniversary P-Bass, USA Geddy Lee J-Bass, Yamaha BBP35, D'angelico SS Bari, EXL1,

Select Strat, 70th Anniversary Esquire, LP 57, Eastman T486, T64, Ibanez PM2, Hammond XK4, Moog Voyager

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Great topic! Just joined the forum.

 

Recording chain - (2) Avalon U5's --> Empirical Labs Fatso --> Apogee Element 88, plenty of clean gain. At home I use a pair of Rane SM82's where all keys are submixed. I even come out of the Rane's into the Avalon's when layering synth pads. I keep the mixer level around 50%, same clean signal.

 

In a studio, usually always receive a pair of DI's going straight to the board or outboard preamp before conversion.

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Back in the 80s I used to use a variety of direct boxes through a little Peavey mixer to tape. After a couple of years I switched to the amps I used live, and a variety of mics. Never looked back.

For at least 30 years I've used amps & mics into LFACs. No EQ, compression, or other processing on the way to tape or Radar. I play mostly electro-acoustic or acoustic, and analog synths for recording.

For the rare live gig any more I just take the Kronos & a SS V3.

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Three different paths exist in my room for synths. 1) Direct to my interface (Focusrite Rednet2). 2) Direct to SQ-5 digital mixer. 3) The DI's in my Rupert Neve preamps, which then go to interface.

 

The Neve DI's are magnificent. Noticably better than the Radial DI's with Jensen transformers. I find that the Minimoog, and some others sound better going through the DI path. The input transformers and the isolation kill noise.

 

I did the experiment of recording my Solaris using digital IO and analog and couldn't tell the difference. I decided not to care, and analog is easier to deal with than those flimsy ADAT/SPDIF optical cables. (I also no longer have a digital interface that takes SPDIF - its all AES/EBU on XLR). Theoretically, it should be better as direct digital, but in a project? Pretty unimportant to musical meaning.

 

In my latest studio re-org and rewire, my plan is to just use the Neve DI path into my DAW. It's easy, sounds great, and it is convenient physically.

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Unbalanced jacks (Integra-7, Kronos, Deepmind12, Numa Organ) into an XR18. 3m cables.

Just had my Minilogue returned from a friend... that puts me at 19 inputs, dammit! It"s pretty much silent.

 

DAW outputs into an iConnevtivity Audio2+. Three outputs to monitors, headphone amp, and just some more headphones.

Nice to have a volume knob handy rather than having to use an app or route MIDI from the Kronos or whatever to the the XR18.

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Hello to all; not playing live anywhere for the foreseeable future and my band mates have asked me to use Adobe Audition to record tracks so they can keep our music going for friends and fans. I can use any of my boards but need some help getting up and running. I have a HS sk-1 61, Mojo 61, and a Mojo dual. I tried using a USB cable from the organs into my computer, a Dell running Windows 7. (Old Hammond player and NOT well versed in recording outside a real studio using a B3 & Leslie.) No luck with that connection, computer not seeing anything. I looked in our search mode for midi to usb cables, and looked online at some available from box stores, music dealers... I'm thinking that something like a Roland um-one-mk2 might work for me? Any direction here would be helpful. Thanks for your time, Joe.
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Hello to all; not playing live anywhere for the foreseeable future and my band mates have asked me to use Adobe Audition to record tracks so they can keep our music going for friends and fans. I can use any of my boards but need some help getting up and running. I have a HS sk-1 61, Mojo 61, and a Mojo dual. I tried using a USB cable from the organs into my computer, a Dell running Windows 7. (Old Hammond player and NOT well versed in recording outside a real studio using a B3 & Leslie.) No luck with that connection, computer not seeing anything. I looked in our search mode for midi to usb cables, and looked online at some available from box stores, music dealers... I'm thinking that something like a Roland um-one-mk2 might work for me? Any direction here would be helpful. Thanks for your time, Joe.

 

Sounds like you are expecting audio from your organs to be transmitted over USB, but they don't do that. You need to use the normal audio outputs of the instruments and an audio interface to get the sound into the computer for recording.

Moe

---

 

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Hello to all; not playing live anywhere for the foreseeable future and my band mates have asked me to use Adobe Audition to record tracks so they can keep our music going for friends and fans. I can use any of my boards but need some help getting up and running. I have a HS sk-1 61, Mojo 61, and a Mojo dual. I tried using a USB cable from the organs into my computer, a Dell running Windows 7. (Old Hammond player and NOT well versed in recording outside a real studio using a B3 & Leslie.) No luck with that connection, computer not seeing anything. I looked in our search mode for midi to usb cables, and looked online at some available from box stores, music dealers... I'm thinking that something like a Roland um-one-mk2 might work for me? Any direction here would be helpful. Thanks for your time, Joe.

 

Hey Joe, the simplest thing for you would probably be a USB audio interface like the one in my post (Focusrite Scarlett 2i4) or similar, there are a few other good examples in this thread. If you're just looking to record one keyboard at a time on top of beds your bandmates have layed down, that would be enough, but if you're wanting to plug multiple keyboards in and record simultaneously you'll need a few more inputs. Regardless, that'll allow you to plug 1/4" or XLR cables into the box and press record like if it was tape. (I confess I don't actually know much about MIDI, despite my age.)

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Nord Electro into the line input on my FA-07, which sounds a combined output to my zx-a1, which sends a signal via XLR to the mixing board and my Korg D3200 multitrack recorder. This is for live gigs where I record our 7-person covers band, with up to 5 vocal mics in use at once, so we are maxed out on the number of inputs to record from.
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Three different paths exist in my room for synths. 1) Direct to my interface (Focusrite Rednet2). 2) Direct to SQ-5 digital mixer. 3) The DI's in my Rupert Neve preamps, which then go to interface.

 

The Neve DI's are magnificent. Noticably better than the Radial DI's with Jensen transformers. I find that the Minimoog, and some others sound better going through the DI path. The input transformers and the isolation kill noise.

 

I did the experiment of recording my Solaris using digital IO and analog and couldn't tell the difference. I decided not to care, and analog is easier to deal with than those flimsy ADAT/SPDIF optical cables. (I also no longer have a digital interface that takes SPDIF - its all AES/EBU on XLR). Theoretically, it should be better as direct digital, but in a project? Pretty unimportant to musical meaning.

 

In my latest studio re-org and rewire, my plan is to just use the Neve DI path into my DAW. It's easy, sounds great, and it is convenient physically.

 

Nathanael, how would you describe difference in sound quality between Sq5 vs. your fewer tracks options like the Focusrite? I use dx4816 pres into Sq5 for full band stage recording, but I wonder if I might want to get another high end interface for critical overdubs in the studio. ???? (For me, It might be Apollo Twin x for Console 1 integration).

Barry

 

Home: Steinway L, Montage 8

 

Gigs: Yamaha CP88, Crumar Mojo 61, A&H SQ5 mixer, ME1 IEM, MiPro 909 IEMs

 

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