Stereo out to the house

[bachsteady]

So I have all my rig running into a powered mixer and some of the keyboards I run stereo so I can hear my two powered pa speakers in stereo, I find the piano sound 100x better this way as opposed to mono. But, when the sound man asks for my line out to him from the mixer I have the option to give him two stereo xlr"s out or one. They seem to act like it doesn"t matter but I notice a big difference on the quality of the sounds when going stereo. Usually they just ask for one....What do you recommend giving the FOH sound guy when dialing in your sound? Thanks a bunch

[Anderton]

A lot of it depends on the venue itself, the acoustics, how "stereo" the piano really is, and where the audience is located. Ideally, you don't want to have a "sweet spot" where only a limited number of people hear decent stereo, while the others hear an unbalanced signal.

 

If the stereo comes from note position, that could be a problem. If the stereo comes from ambience, that's less important because the bulk of the audience will still hear the piano properly. If the ambience is a little unbalanced, no one will care all that much.

 

Another possibility is to give two feeds, but don't hard pan them - do one a little left of center, and the other a little right of center. It will still give a stereo "feel" to most of the audience, without too much of an unbalanced sound for those who are close to the stage and off to the left or right sides.

 

Hope this helps...

[harmonizer]

Will the FOH sound guy actually send a stereo sound to the listening audience? If yes, what percent of the listening audience will be in a location so they can hear the desired stereo image, as opposed to just hearing mostly one side or the other? In most cases, I won't really know the answer to these questions. There is an analogy to what they did in the Motown recording studios: they would play back the recordings using home stereo equipment, to make sure the result would sound to the actual intended audience. This is why I want to hear my keyboards sounds from a single monitor at rehearsal, and why I always send mono to the FOH.

 

If I am doing a non-live studio-like recording, that is a completely different story. I am working on an "isolated cover" project with members of our covers band, and for the EP Rhodes sound I loved the Brite Tines with stereo tremelo sound that I got from my Electro 3, so I captured that in stereo.

[Docbop]

Unless the room is small most the audience is only hearing half you piano. Give the FOH your stereo out and say you like some separation and leave it to them to decide how wide to make your keys in the mix. In a large room think of stereo as an effect, not something you want on all the time.

 

Even recording you don't want a wide stereo instrument in the mix unless done for an effect. Mixing you decide the placement in the stereo image, then how wide within that area.

[Stokely]

If they ask for one they likely have only one channel for you. It's pretty normal in my non-pro experience that sound companies run mono.

 

Heck my band goes mono now with our new mixer (which is irritating, as I'm not only mono out front but there aren't enough sends for me to monitor in stereo like I was.) Just due to that I use a submixer with a pre-fader aux send on it, that goes to FOH (minus the monitor feed that comes back from FOH with all the non-keyboard instruments), I monitor from the stereo outs.

 

I think it's a good idea to keep stereo stuff kind of subtle, certainly I wouldn't use a patch where highs were all on one side, lows on another or something like that. As noted by others, most people aren't going to have a perfect position to hear you. I'd also check patches in both stereo and mono to make sure they don't change in volume or timbre drastically. I've experienced that, mostly with stereo fx on the patches. I mainly like stereo because it helps my monitoring by providing some separation with the other instruments (not as much as being able to pan all of those, but as I said I no longer have that ability).

[Mike Warren]

It's still very common to run FOH in mono since usually 2/3 of the audience are not in a position to gain any benefit from stereo.

[Reezekeys]

Mono FOH... I must be in an alternate universe because in my last 8 years of touring, playing jazz clubs, rock clubs, theatres, outdoor festivals, and concert halls, I have encountered mono FOH systems twice - one was a small club somewhere in the Carolinas, and another was the Catalina jazz club in LA. 99.9% of every place I've played is stereo.

 

As for the argument "since most of the audience won't be in the 'sweet spot', stereo isn't useful or worth it." AFAIK the "sweet spot" is not some magic zone with a razor-sharp imaginary line separating it from the "non" sweet spot. Of course stereo sounds better when you're centered and equidistant from the two sound sources - but whatever stereo image is present doesn't instantly disappear when you step 6 inches outside the "sweet spot." And a well-sampled stereo piano doesn't have bass notes coming entirely out the left side and treble coming out the right â the panning is subtle, a by-product of close-micing the strings.

 

I'm open to arguments that show me being wrong about this, but I think most sampled pianos are stereo and summing them to mono results in a boxy, phase-cancelled sound. How could it be better to sum L&R channels and send this degraded sound out of all the PA speakers? Sure, you avoid the sweet spot issue - it sounds bad everywhere! I know, you could send only the left or right channel to FOH -- that's not a great solution imo. Better than phase-cancelled boxyness but biased to the high or low register, so a bit unbalanced.

 

A typical audience will not know or care about this issue. My advice has always been: you're the musician, the person who spent time researching gear to buy, spending money setting up a rig you enjoy playing, who (maybe?!) practiced to get better at playing, maybe worked hard rehearsing with a band, shlepped and set up your gear, etc., etc... and now you should knowingly degrade your sound because some of the audience won't be in the sweet spot?

 

Give the sound person your stereo output. Hope they do a good job. Set up your two monitors, put yourself in your sweet spot, and try to enjoy yourself. Enjoying what you do - what a quaint concept!

[Baldwin Funster]

You got to watch how your stereo fx sound foh vs your practice room. A stereo patch with the speakers 10 feet apart sounds like one thing. The same stereo patch with speakers 100 feet apart dont always sound 10x better. Sometimes it just sounds weird and not in the mix right.

[Reezekeys]

bachsteady - try this at your next gig, if you get a real soundcheck. Give the sound person L&R. Find someone to play your keys, go out to the sound board and have the sound person start with both channels panned center (mono). Then have him or her pan the channels to opposite sides as your keys are played. Your ears will tell you what sounds good. Maybe walk around the room while the sound person repeats this.

 

Using my laptop rig with TouchOSC, I used to have a short midi sequence I could trigger from my iPhone, and also adjust eq as I walked around a room. I never messed with the stereo spread though - this was for my self-contained gigs where I was not going into any house sound system. Pianos, and especially rhodes samples, usually needed quite a bit of bass cut to sound better and not suck up too much of the music's mix energy. Every room was different, but I usually wound up with almost the same eq settings at every gig so I gave up on this particular example of nerdiness!

[brenner13]

Another possibility is to give two feeds, but don't hard pan them - do one a little left of center, and the other a little right of center. It will still give a stereo "feel" to most of the audience, without too much of an unbalanced sound for those who are close to the stage and off to the left or right sides.

^^^^

This.

 

I tried only the L channel out of each keyboard a few times. Always sounded thin and lifeless. Both channels out of the keys just sounds better to me, even when going into a mono system. Yeah, I know there are dangers of phasing and canceling out frequencies, but I have not really experienced it so far.

 

If the FOH is running mono, keep it simple for them and provide a single line, which has the sum of your R&L signals, right? If the House is running stereo, send them two. A competent sound tech is probably not going to hard pan your signals anyway.

[niacin]

I give the sound guy whatever he asks for figuring that if I make him happy just maybe there'll be some keys in FOH. 9 times out of 10 that means mono. If he asks for stereo it's a good indication that he actually knows what he's doing and will sort things out at the desk. Sample-wise it's only pianos, but if I pursue the conversation it usually turns out he wants the Leslie in stereo and at that point I'm pretty confident that it's in safe hands.

[Reezekeys]

I have (er, had, lol) the advantage of traveling with band that has its own tech that comes with us. He actually does monitors, but knows my setup and interfaces with the FOH person. As part of our sound checks, I put my rhodes stereo tremolo on to hear the sound bouncing between the left & right mains to make sure they got it right out front. I use that stereo rhodes (with the panning width reduced), but I also have some nice pads & strings that sound like complete shit in mono. I have been out front and heard my rig at several locations, and those pads & strings (along with the piano) really sound good in stereo. A little less so from the sides of the room of course, but imo that is not a reason to scrap stereo entirely!

[pinkfloydcramer]

I'm on my 3rd Motion Sound amp (200s, 100s, currently 408s) but stereo monitoring isn't as big deal with me for me as it used to be. Mostly because my newer pianos (unlike my old Yamaha P120) just sound better (less phasey) through a single speaker, to me. I mostly use the 408s for solo, piano-only gigs.

 

I'm all for being happy with your sound though, whatever it takes. It's puzzling, and more than a little frustrating at times, how guitar players are expected to be so fussy about "tone" but no one expects keyboard players to care much about how they sound.

[CowboyNQ]

My philosophy has always been to run stereo to FOH as all my patches, samples and effects are in stereo.

 

I can"t remember ever running mono. Maybe when I was first starting out?

 

Sound engineers are advised to run stereo in the tech advance. I"ve never had one raise even half an eyebrow at this requirement.

[Stokely]

My philosophy has always been to run stereo to FOH as all my patches, samples and effects are in stereo.

 

I can"t remember ever running mono. Maybe when I was first starting out?

 

Sound engineers are advised to run stereo in the tech advance. I"ve never had one raise even half an eyebrow at this requirement.

 

 

Odd. Maybe it's a "level of show" thing? My bands have always been at the lower end of things, our biggest sound company gigs are 4th of July at the park type of gigs. I've never had a sound person ask for anything but mono from me, not one time in decades...often they just hand me one DI box or already have it up there if it's a multi-band thing. Perhaps it was available, I tend not to rock the boat with sound people They usually seem very stressed out and I feel lucky if I can end up hearing anything during the show.

[Moonglow]

Stereo to the out house?

 

Sorry, carry on...

[bachsteady]

Thanks for all the feedback gang... If possible I will see if I can hear the difference between mono and stereo for myself in the mains durning a sound check. But if that not possible I will hand the sound man two lines outs and hope for the best, haha

[CowboyNQ]

My philosophy has always been to run stereo to FOH as all my patches, samples and effects are in stereo.

 

I can"t remember ever running mono. Maybe when I was first starting out?

 

Sound engineers are advised to run stereo in the tech advance. I"ve never had one raise even half an eyebrow at this requirement.

 

 

Odd. Maybe it's a "level of show" thing? My bands have always been at the lower end of things, our biggest sound company gigs are 4th of July at the park type of gigs. I've never had a sound person ask for anything but mono from me.

 

I find that really interesting - clearly we"ve had very different experiences in that regard.

 

It"s not a 'level of show' thing I can assure you. I play in three different bands and some of the shows I do are pretty low-brow, haha!

 

But yeah - I always let the soundy know in advance that we"ll be running in stereo and it"s never caused an issue.

 

Certainly agree with you about not annoying them. I like to have a fighting chance of being heard out front.