SMcD

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Ah, nice. Guessing you drilled a coupla holes further down then? I'll keep this idea in mind, although it's not ideal since the lowest height on the stand is already pretty much ideal for me.

Is it the perspective of this pic that's tripping me up, or do you have the Nord sitting well above the crossbar? I recently bought this stand and I love it, but the crossbar is at exactly the wrong height so that it's in the way of the cable inputs on my Hammond SKX. If you've discovered a way to give the bottom keyboard a bit more vertical clearance, I'd love to know.

Imo, it's a lot easier to think of it as biii-VII from the raised fourth degree of the relative major.

Thanks for the ideas and input, folks! UE claims that they can improve the stereo imaging from the IEM by adjusting the fit, so first order of business is to ship it back and let them try. I wonder if it'd suffice to change the angle of one of the holes a bit? Say, have the right channel bounce off the inside of my ear canal at a different angle so it doesn't interact with the left channel as directly. We'll have to wait and see. Failing that, I'll start playing with delay and reverb. Of course, the "delay one channel by 3ms" approach bypasses the need for stereo playback entirely (i.e. it would also work when electronically summing to mono). [One does wonder why they'd charge full price for a "single-sided stereo monitor" if the effect is doomed by physics to be virtually identical to mono. I can't think of any situation where you wouldn't be able to sum at the source, so what's the point of offering separated channels in one unit if there's no real difference?] In your experience, was the effect more or less uniform across the range of the piano? In other words: it works well for middle C; does it work as well for the C three octaves down? Three octaves up?

Isn't this what a DI box does?

Not a bad idea, but I do wonder if a small delay on one channel would introduce phase cancellations at some frequencies while mitigating others. Is the "room effect" as simple as a delay between channels, or would other factors be necessary to simulate the walls and such?

Thanks! Ideally I'd love a hardware solution that's easy to use when gigging. Bonus if I can rig headphones into it for listening to music as well. Unfortunately, a Google search for "room simulation pedal" or "room modelling pedal" mostly gives amp sims. As you can imagine, neutrality is a must given that we're dealing with DP's.

I wonder if it would suffice to apply some subtle, fast, small-room reverb to one of the DP channels (or separately to each of them), and maybe a tiny amount of phase shifting on one of the channels. On the other hand, if it was that simple, wouldn't everyone do it? EDIT: the more I think about this, the more baffled I am that the onboard reverb in a DP doesn't usually prevent phase cancellation. When applied subtly to a stereo patch, shouldn't that act as the kind of "room simulation" I'm talking about here? What's missing compared to a real room?

Yet another thread in what's turning out to be a SMcD Series. Long story short: I permanently lost the use of my left ear in late 2020, which forced me to learn the hard way about all of the problems that arise when summing stereo sounds into mono. Of course, all of it - mixes changing on recorded music, DP patches sounding lifeless, etc. - is worst through headphone(s), when L + R channels are summed electronically at the source. However, I've found that it's never a problem for me with external stereo speakers. Even when they're fairly close together (like in my Traynor K4), the fullness of stereo sounds lands in my good ear without anything being noticeably lost or cancelled. As I understand it, this is because of complex physical interactions happening in the matter between the speakers and my ear. The sound waves bounce in unpredictable ways off speaker cases, walls, my head, etc. - so the final sound that arrives at my ear includes both channels, but with enough "room randomness" to smooth out any potential for egregious phase cancellation. In other words, letting sound waves combine "in the air" produces better results than combining them electronically. With that in mind, I ordered a custom fit "single-sided stereo" IEM from Ultimate Ears. The L + R channels each have separate armatures, all crammed into one earpiece. The hope was that this would be enough physical separation for some "room randomness" to be introduced in my ear canal: an internal, scaled-down version of the phenomenon I experience with my K4. Unfortunately, this did not turn out to be the case. Out-of-phase signals aren't totally cancelled as they would be with electronic summation, but they end up being so faint that the difference from mono sound is ultimately negligible. Sensaphonics has a similar product that promises compromise-free stereo, but I fear that the physics just aren't on my side. No matter which product I go with, it's a tiny physical separation between channels and a relatively small amount of matter between the source and my eardrum. Maybe there's just no way to introduce enough "randomness" to the sound waves with that setup. But...the fact remains that I can hear a reasonable stereo image externally, in a room, with my K4. And it has me wondering if the "room" can be simulated. I'm talking about some intermediate step(s) in a signal path that would introduce a significant degree of phase randomization, maybe a tiny bit of reverberation...whatever's going on between my K4, my walls, and me. You'd put one side of a stereo DP input through that (I think it'd suffice to do only one and leave the other side pure), then route the outputs as normal. What comes out of my single-sided stereo IEM would be both DP channels, but with enough simulated room randomness to keep the full image. Does such a product exist? Could it be approximated with some combination of effects? What would be involved in the kind of "room simulation" I'm describing here?

Update/thread necromancy: Shortly after discovering the Sensaphonics 221, I discovered that Ultimate Ears makes a similar product (i.e. a single, custom-molded IEM with separate armatures for left & right channels). I emailed both to ask some questions. Sensaphonics didn't reply, UE did. After some back-and-forth, I ended up being reasonably satisfied that the UE offering would deliver a well-preserved stereo image to my good ear, and I made the order. It arrived about three weeks ago and...I was disappointed (read: devastated). I used some internet test audio to verify that out-of-phase signals (i.e. things that disappear when electronically summed to mono) do come through with the earbud. However, they are extremely faint relative to in-phase sounds. As such, in practical applications (listening to music or playing a stereo DP patch), there is no discernable difference between mono and stereo with this thing. The stereo mix of "Sympathy for the Devil" is my go-to test for these things - the piano should be incredibly prominent when the source device is in stereo, and this is obvious with external speakers. The Ultimate Ears IEM failed this test: the piano is phase-cancelled into near-silence, regardless of the audio mode on the source device. And it makes no difference to the age-old problem of "boxy mono summation" when playing a DP, either. I'm wondering if they made the "holes" too close together, so that the audio from the left and right channels is summing in the air before hitting my eardrum. Perhaps a few extra millimeters of space, or slightly different angles, would maintain enough channel separation to keep a fuller stereo image (the fact that I can hear the stereo difference through my Traynor K4 suggests that it should be possible to funnel some combination of channels into my ear canal in approximately the right way). Alternatively, the fit may be off. Getting the impression was more uncomfortable than I expected, so the IEM may have ended up being too "big". The seal is good, but it does seem to sit further out than the ones in the stock photos, and trying to push it in further causes discomfort. I'm waiting for customer service at UE to get back to me on these issues. Hopefully I can bounce it back to the lab and they can sort it out (I'm approaching the end of the 30-day return period). Failing that, maybe I'll get on the phone with Sensaphonics.

What is the advantage that a DI box has over, say, just turning down the volume on either the keyboard or the mixer? My Soundcraft 12FX has line-level TRS inputs; I would think that'd be pretty common on most mixers.

Reese Wynans would like a word.

What is the deal with airline food, anyway?

The ability to move one's left hand back and forth between significant distances at that speed and make sure it lands on the right keys every time has always been awe-inspiring, and somewhat baffling, to me.

This seems to make some difference! But I'm a bit concerned that the tension created by doing this for extended periods of time could bend parts of the stand, especially when using the crossbar.

My 18880 came in from Thomann today. Impressively fast shipping given the distance. First of all, I love how light this thing is. What an engineering marvel. Super easy to collapse and transport, and plenty of pedal room too. I'll express the usual frustrations about the difficulty of adjusting the height. Unfortunately, @Sean M. H.'s warning about a little bit of side-to-side wobble wastrue, and my PC4 does jiggle a bit if I hit it real hard (especially towards the ends of the keyboard). My instinct was to tighten everything on the stand as much as I could before using it, but that didn't fully eliminate wobble. Is it possible that over-tightening the stand could exacerbate wobble? Like, maybe it needs to have a little "give" for shock absorption? Not sure if that theory makes any sense or not.

Yeah, I was quite surprised to see that they ship to Canada but not the US. I was expecting it to be the other way around. Perhaps someone at L&M is misinformed. Either way, soon I'll have one, and I better love it because I'm not returning it overseas. 😅

I've always liked the look of a nice, unaltered logo onstage, but the temptation to bust out the electrical tape and fashion myself a HAM SKX is pretty high now.

Shit, that's Pickett in ToP? Dude might have the most impressive altissimo in the world. He's been my favourite part of SNL for at least 15 years.

Ah well. The WS/550 came out of the box with the kind of wobble you could hear. Realistically it couldn't have been more than a centimeter of movement, but I said in the other thread, I'd like to think that when you buy a stand you should be able to play some rollicking Nicky Hopkins piano parts without making a PC4 visibly shake. I managed to reduce the wobble pretty significantly with some strategically-applied duct tape, but the downside is that, with the added resistance, you can't adjust the leg height without some serious force. Surely the 18880 will be an improvement from that?

Shit. I was hoping for a wobble reduction relative to the apparently-shoddily-constructed WS/550 I just bought. All of the discussion on this forum indicated the 18880 would be super-stable, so it seemed like a slam dunk. I'll either be pairing it with my Kurzweil PC4 (26 pounds) or my Hammond SKX (38 pounds). One's going on the K&M and one's going on the Hercules, and I'll have to figure out which configuration makes more sense once I have both the stands.

It is certainly a boutique item. Folks less picky than ourselves probably don't mind the apparent decline in Quik Lok manufacturing. Hell, X-stands are ubiquitous in my neck of the woods. 😬 I did just manage to put in an order for a 18880 from thomann.de, which apparently still has them in stock. Surprisingly, even with a hefty international shipping charge the total cost worked out to about $230 CAD, which is a lot less than I expected to pay for this thing. Now we just hope that nothing goes wrong with the order, and then hope that (knock every type of wood you can find) nothing goes wrong with the shipment.

Sorry for the second stand thread in as many days. Following a recent disappointing purchase from Quik Lok, I spent much of today researching other stands and decided to see about ordering the universally-lauded K&M 18880. Long & McQuade (the biggest music retailer in Canada) had other K&M products listed on their site, but nothing in the way of keyboard stands (mainly just sheet music and horn stands). Even the other online Canadian retailers that did have their KB stands seemed to have everything except the 18880. Even Sweetwater seemed to be out of stock. Finally, I called L&M to see if they could special-order me one. They would've been able to, for the low price of $260 CAD...until the guy on the phone checked their systems and discovered that the 18880 has been discontinued. Needless to say, this came as quite an unpleasant surprise. From what I've heard, the stand is basically invincible, which is miraculous given its weight. Has anyone heard anything about this, or am I breaking the news here? For now, I ordered a Hercules KS410B for my other board (second tier for stages that are too small to admit my preferred L-shaped setup). I'm tempted to get two, but I was really hoping to get the 18880 as my second stand, as its lightness/compactness would make the Car-Tetris a lot easier. Off to Amazon and eBay, I suppose.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm always hesitant to start making new holes in my gear, but I'll keep the drilling idea in mind. Are you referring to the screws that attach the legs to the body? Adjusting those would increase the resistance where the legs meet the body, but I don't think that's the main issue with my stand. If you're talking about the height-adjustable part of the legs, there don't seem to be any tightening screws (and therein lies the problem). I ended up using duct tape instead of electrical. Put 2-3 layers around each leg, both surrounding the height adjustment peg and at the "hidden" end that inserts into the stand itself. The challenge was finding the "goldilocks zone" where the tape is thick enough to provide some resistance, but not so thick that I couldn't cram the legs back in. Results are...moderately successful. I seem to have reduced the wiggle by a fair bit, but it's still nonzero, and the stand isn't particularly resilient on uneven floors. Call me a dreamer, but I'd like my digital piano to "handle" like an acoustic piano: in the sense that it should stay put with all but the craziest of Jerry Lee Lewis-style pounding. I'm considering replacing the stand outright: duct tape and DIY shouldn't be necessary on a $200 piece of equipment. I was eyeing a Hercules Z-stand for my Hammond SKX, and I might pick up a second one for the Kurz. Either that, or a K&M 18800 if I can find a way to get one up to Canada (the few online retailers carrying K&M stands seem to have everything except that one), but those ain't cheap. Any other thoughts?