cassdad Posted December 10, 2023 Share Posted December 10, 2023 Background: I’m a big “got to hear my digital piano in stereo” because I think it sounds incomparably better than in mono. So… I handed 2 XLRs to the sound guy, “telling him to pan one full left and pan the other full right”. He responds to me that his PA / FOH mixer “is not stereo, it’s mono, so it won’t make any difference”. I told him to please just make me happy and do it. And I’m told it sounded great in the venue. Question: For you “live sound” experts: Is panning an input full left or right any different in a mono system than a stereo system? Specifically - If I put the left channel of my piano into input #5 and pan it full left, and the right channel from my piano into input #6 and pan it full right - won’t that still result in true stereo at the FOH? (As long as the mixer has separate left and right outs). In other words - if the mixer has a “pan” control, can stereo still be accomplished even in a “mono” system? (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mixer without a pan control.) Quote Ludwig van Beethoven: “To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.” My Rig: Yamaha MOXF8 (used mostly for acoustic piano voices); Motion Sound KP-612SX & SL-512; Apple iPad Pro (5th Gen, M1 chip); Apple MacBook Pro 2021 (M1 Max chip). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mate stubb Posted December 10, 2023 Share Posted December 10, 2023 Short answer: No. While the mixer may be stereo capable, the entire rest of the PA must also have a stereo path in order to achieve it. Somewhere in the system, it's either getting summed to mono, or everything panned hard to one side is getting lost entirely. So your 2 piano signals were either summed to mono and fortunately did not get a bunch of phase cancellation OR you were hearing only one side. Fortunately it worked out. Since you are likely to encounter this again, it would be good to figure out exactly how things were set up. 1 Quote Moe --- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cassdad Posted December 10, 2023 Author Share Posted December 10, 2023 4 minutes ago, matted stump said: Short answer: No. While the mixer may be stereo capable, the entire rest of the PA must also have a stereo path in order to achieve it. Somewhere in the system, it's either getting summed to mono, or everything panned hard to one side is getting lost entirely. So your 2 piano signals were either summed to mono and fortunately did not get a bunch of phase cancellation OR you were hearing only one side. Fortunately it worked out. Since you are likely to encounter this again, it would be good to figure out exactly how things were set up. Hmmm….. the “house PA” was a QSC 12 inch powered unit hung in the air on the left, and another identical one hung to the right. And the outs of his mixer were simply the left one going to the left QSC, and the right one to the right QSC. Still seems like a stereo-capable path to me. In fact, I’m not understanding how it could be otherwise (unless the 2 speakers were wired serially)? Quote Ludwig van Beethoven: “To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.” My Rig: Yamaha MOXF8 (used mostly for acoustic piano voices); Motion Sound KP-612SX & SL-512; Apple iPad Pro (5th Gen, M1 chip); Apple MacBook Pro 2021 (M1 Max chip). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mate stubb Posted December 10, 2023 Share Posted December 10, 2023 7 minutes ago, cassdad said: Hmmm….. the “house PA” was a QSC 12 inch powered unit hung in the air on the left, and another identical one hung to the right. And the outs of his mixer were simply the left one going to the left QSC, and the right one to the right QSC. Still seems like a stereo-capable path to me. In fact, I’m not understanding how it could be otherwise (unless the 2 speakers were wired serially)? Well, if you inspected the PA setup yourself and it was hooked up as described, that changes things. If the mixer had pan control and left and right outputs, it is stereo. If each output goes directly to its own powered speaker, then the system is stereo. However, the sound guy said it's mono. Something is missing - either the sound guy is wrong, or there is something plugged in between that makes it mono. Graphic EQ for the room or external limiters perhaps? Do you know the model mixer being used? 1 Quote Moe --- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cassdad Posted December 10, 2023 Author Share Posted December 10, 2023 25 minutes ago, matted stump said: Well, if you inspected the PA setup yourself and it was hooked up as described, that changes things. If the mixer had pan control and left and right outputs, it is stereo. If each output goes directly to its own powered speaker, then the system is stereo. However, the sound guy said it's mono. Something is missing - either the sound guy is wrong, or there is something plugged in between that makes it mono. Graphic EQ for the room or external limiters perhaps? Do you know the model mixer being used? QSC Touchmix 16. I just looked at the specs…. although it does have one “stereo” input, it does not specifically state that it is a stereo mixer…. but it does have separate left and right outs. When I looked at it, I thought it could pan true left and right…. but the sound guy says it’s “mono”. I don’t know. Quote Ludwig van Beethoven: “To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.” My Rig: Yamaha MOXF8 (used mostly for acoustic piano voices); Motion Sound KP-612SX & SL-512; Apple iPad Pro (5th Gen, M1 chip); Apple MacBook Pro 2021 (M1 Max chip). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Docbop Posted December 10, 2023 Share Posted December 10, 2023 The PA could be just using the left and right mixer outs to send a mono out to left side and right side to the power amps or powered speakers, so the PA is running in mono. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Delaware Dave Posted December 10, 2023 Share Posted December 10, 2023 3 hours ago, Docbop said: The PA could be just using the left and right mixer outs to send a mono out to left side and right side to the power amps or powered speakers, so the PA is running in mono. This. Even if it is a stereo mixer if everything is panned center then he's essentially running mono. It's possible that he said he is running mono because he doesnt have enough channels to run in stereo. if he has a 12 channel board that is 12 instrument inputs panned center for mono vs. 6 instrument input stereo pairs before he runs out of channels. If he had enough open channels he could have panned you left and right and you'd be in stereo while everyone else is in mono. also, when adjustments need to be made it is easier to make one input channel adjustment to tweak an instrument vs. having to tweak and balance two channels. left side might be bassier and louder than the right channel for piano so he makes an adjustment then you pull up a synth and the right side might be louder and bassier so be is constantly chasing this all night. The bottom line is that you reported that the audience said the keys sounded great and the keys were in mono so I wouldnt sweat it. i cant even remember the last time i ran my rig in stereo and it always sounds great in mono, even the pianos. 1 Quote 57 Hammond B3; 69 Hammond L100P; 68 Leslie 122; Kurzweil Forte7 & PC3; M-Audio Code 61; Voce V5+; Neo Vent; EV ELX112P; GSI Gemini & Burn Delaware Dave Exit93band Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b3plyr Posted December 10, 2023 Share Posted December 10, 2023 4 hours ago, cassdad said: QSC Touchmix 16. I just looked at the specs…. although it does have one “stereo” input, it does not specifically state that it is a stereo mixer…. but it does have separate left and right outs. When I looked at it, I thought it could pan true left and right…. but the sound guy says it’s “mono”. I don’t know. The Touchmix is definitely a stereo mixer. I use one all the time. And more generally, if a mixer has left and right outputs it is stereo capable. That’s why you have controls for pan - to send which instruments and what levels you want to send to each side, i.e., left and right. So, don’t let him tell you it is not stereo capable. Maybe as someone else mentioned, he is short input channels. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baldwin Funster Posted December 10, 2023 Share Posted December 10, 2023 It was probably easier for him to tell you the PA was mono than to explain he's running it in mono. Plus you handed him 2 XLRs. That would require 2 mono channels using up valuable resources. If you want stereo hand the guy 2 1/4" cables so he can run you into a stereo line channel. 3 Quote FunMachine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokely Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 I cannot think of any PA where I've been able to run stereo other than ours, unfortunately. That includes clubs, resorts and sound company deals. We aren't a high-end band doing big shows so ymmv. A fair number of the resorts and clubs pipe the sound around to different speakers so that kinda means mono right there. I wouldn't give them stereo unless I could also monitor in stereo (I have a couple ways to do this, but both would require in-ears, which isn't always an option). And if the PA is in mono, I monitor in mono. I like knowing what the FOH engineer is getting. Agreed that pianos suck in mono, it is a pet peeve of mine. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnotherScott Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 On 12/10/2023 at 11:19 AM, cassdad said: Background: I’m a big “got to hear my digital piano in stereo” because I think it sounds incomparably better than in mono. So… I handed 2 XLRs to the sound guy, “telling him to pan one full left and pan the other full right”. One more variable here... with the piano sound panned full left and full right, only a minority of the audience hears stereo anyway. Most people are hearing either mostly the left side, or mostly the right side. I'm not sure there's much benefit to a stereo piano in a FOH situation. 4 Quote Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokely Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 Problem is that condensing it to mono causes phase/tone issues and even volume changes (in some pianos more than others). That last bit is why I resolved to always monitor whatever I send to FOH after being told by two engineers that the piano was disappearing out front compared to all my other patches.. To me in my ears it was loud and proud in stereo 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Docbop Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 5 minutes ago, Stokely said: Problem is that condensing it to mono causes phase/tone issues and even volume changes (in some pianos more than others). That last bit is why I resolved to always monitor whatever I send to FOH after being told by two engineers that the piano was disappearing out front compared to all my other patches.. To me in my ears it was loud and proud in stereo Then I'd say just do a narrow spread to avoid cancellations and maybe pan just slight left or right to reflect your position on stage like left of center or right. So audience hears thing in the position players are on stage. Hard panning in a large venue really is a bad sound cheating the audience as the previous post said. No one really wants to hear a band with a 50' wide piano except their mother. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CEB Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 Holy cow. Never hard pan stereo keyboard outs in the FOH. especially many EPs. When you stereo mic a Leslie you never hard pan the top rotor either. Maybe 10 and 2 or at most 9 and 3. It just often doesn’t work unless you are playing a bedroom. Last 5-10 year more often than not I have had stereo front house. Stereo tops with bridge mono subs are common. You still don’t do it. 1 Quote "It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne "A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!! So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnotherScott Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 Another way to avoid the problem of a piano poorly summing to mono is to just take one output from the piano, the side that doesn't itself sum to mono (so, usually the right side). Of if you take it from the sum-to-mono side (typically left), put a dummy plug in the other side to prevent the summing. 3 Quote Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baldwin Funster Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 Usually your options are stereo keys buried in the mix or mono keys buried in the mix. Mono is less to deal with considering you won't be heard anyways. 1 Quote FunMachine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CEB Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 I was almost always heard. Don’t work with amateurs. Synth pads in more modern Pop music are difficult. Especially if a guitarist plays on a tune where one didn’t exist in the original recording. That stuff disappears live. Even the crowd can bury you. Live is not the studio. But other than than I was usually loud in the front. Quote "It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne "A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!! So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baldwin Funster Posted December 11, 2023 Share Posted December 11, 2023 17 minutes ago, CEB said: I was almost always heard. Don’t work with amateurs. Synth pads in more modern Pop music are difficult. Especially if a guitarist plays on a tune where one didn’t exist in the original recording. That stuff disappears live. Even the crowd can bury you. Live is not the studio. But other than than I was usually loud in the front. In my region in No Cal sort of between Sac and the Sierra Nev mountains, all there is is amateurs for miles around. Even the pros are amateurs. Quote FunMachine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cassdad Posted December 12, 2023 Author Share Posted December 12, 2023 3 hours ago, CEB said: Holy cow. Never hard pan stereo keyboard outs in the FOH. especially many EPs. When you stereo mic a Leslie you never hard pan the top rotor either. Maybe 10 and 2 or at most 9 and 3. It just often doesn’t work unless you are playing a bedroom. Last 5-10 year more often than not I have had stereo front house. Stereo tops with bridge mono subs are common. You still don’t do it. OK - why not? What is the reason? Quote Ludwig van Beethoven: “To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable.” My Rig: Yamaha MOXF8 (used mostly for acoustic piano voices); Motion Sound KP-612SX & SL-512; Apple iPad Pro (5th Gen, M1 chip); Apple MacBook Pro 2021 (M1 Max chip). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reezekeys Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 10 hours ago, Stokely said: And if the PA is in mono, I monitor in mono. I like knowing what the FOH engineer is getting. Agreed that pianos suck in mono, it is a pet peeve of mine. We're different in that I monitor in stereo regardless of the FOH situation - he or she can make it mono, or maybe it has to be mono because the PA is mono (this I rarely encounter), but I honestly don't care to know what it sounds like out front. You're either going to trust the sound person to make it sound good, or in the case of a bad (mono?) sound system or bad sound person, shouldn't at least one of you get to enjoy good sound? And shouldn't that one person be the person actually playing his or her instrument? 🙂 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hrestov Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 Yes you have to trust the Foh. But you also have to give him a good sound. And a sound that only sound good in stereo isn’t a good sound. Especially piano patch, we must have a sound that s good also in mono. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokely Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 12 hours ago, Reezekeys said: We're different in that I monitor in stereo regardless of the FOH situation - he or she can make it mono, or maybe it has to be mono because the PA is mono (this I rarely encounter), but I honestly don't care to know what it sounds like out front. You're either going to trust the sound person to make it sound good, or in the case of a bad (mono?) sound system or bad sound person, shouldn't at least one of you get to enjoy good sound? And shouldn't that one person be the person actually playing his or her instrument? 🙂 It's not the quality of the sound that is the problem (though it is A problem), the issue I've had is that some pianos---and other patches if you aren't careful--will drop in volume. One engineer said they had to boost the piano every time I played it to hear it. The problem with that is that he didn't know our songs nor when I'd be using piano. I wasn't hearing that same drop--to me the piano was pretty much the loudest and clearest patch I was using. I can certainly try to be more diligent about testing mono at home for every patch, I might have caught this and been able to preemptively just made a mono patch that was boosted. To be fair the Nord I have been using doesn't have this drop in volume. That's one reason I'm using it. It doesn't sound as good as stereo but what piano does... Jealous if you actually encounter stereo PAs. I'm thinking back over the past 12 years I've been in this band, I'm not sure I ever have (and I ask every time). I do agree overall that out front is the engineer's domain. They need to do whatever to make the mix work in the venue. I can't hear it like they do (or at all with IEMs), so I don't "EQ for the room" or frankly ever EQ at all other than a mild high pass. After yesterday--we played a ballroom for a company xmas party--I resolved to go back in and remove reverb from ALL patches. That room was horrible with echo, even the people talking in there made for a din. I don't use a lot, but even a little was too much in there. We have reverb on our main mixer, and any other engineer will have fx on their PA, so it can be added there. While I have a reverb control on the Nord, I would have had to turn it off each time I selected a patch, which wasn't feasible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CEB Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 13 hours ago, cassdad said: OK - why not? What is the reason? Due to audience perspective. Because audience members on the right and audience members on the left do not hear FOH stereo. Mono front house really does make things easier. Quote "It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne "A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!! So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reezekeys Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 We've heard all the arguments. It's very true that there might be a lot of the audience not in the "sweet spot." Some will get more right, some more left. I will say that this is still better than a stereo piano that sums to mono poorly, where the resulting boxy, phasey sound will now be coming out both sides of the PA on a mono system! Also - it's not like a typical stereo sample of a piano has notes panned across the L - R field. That was the old "Nice Piano" of the Roland JV1080, a mono piano that simply panned notes according to their position on the keyboard; not remotely the same as a stereo-sampled piano. Todays' stereo pianos' samples capture the "space" of a piano. Sure there is some bias to where the notes are, but it's not like half the audience won't be able to hear half the piano notes! My experience seems to be special though I certainly don't consider myself in any kind of big-league playing environments (once in a while I luck out!) - but I rarely encounter mono PA systems on my road gigs. It's something like two places, in over ten years of touring - both small clubs. The very bottom line however, is that I've enjoyed playing the same sampled piano on all my gigs for the last seventeen years. I've tried a few others and they're not as satisfying. I've always brought a stereo system to all my gigs in smaller local venues, so there was never an issue with getting a sound that could make everyone happy. The sound I get on my road gigs with the big PAs in bigger venues is gonna be what it is. It may not be perfect but it's gonna have to do! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CEB Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 I run stereo. Sometimes summed to mono sometimes not. Often Stereo tops with bridged mono bottoms. It depends on the contractors. They do their jobs, I do mine. I’m stereo because I monitor stereo unless I’m running Shure Mix mode mono on my IEMs and controlling my own mix between the monitor desk and the keyboard submix. My post was in regards to HARD panning not just direct sounds but twin mics on a Leslie upper rotors. I also avoid Rhodes ping pong effects even though I like the effect on a Suitcase. For the most part I’m right with you. 1 Quote "It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne "A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!! So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sagetunes Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 As far as true stereo keyboard in the house---forget about it. Always remember; If you never trust a soundman, you'll never be disappointed by a soundman. Forget about it. I love a true stereo live sound for myself. Run L/R into 2 powered monitors for yourself. Run a line off headphone jack into your DI into the house. And then forget about it. Enjoy the show. Do it up stereo righteous for yourself--give the sound guy a solid summed/mono signal, and then forget about it. Trust nobody. 1 Quote Hammond B-2, Leslie 122, Hammond Sk1 73, Korg BX3 2001, Leslie 900, Motion Sound Pro 3, Polytone Taurus Elite, Roland RD300 old one, Roland VK7, Fender Rhodes Mark V with Roland JC90 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnotherScott Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 2 hours ago, Reezekeys said: We've heard all the arguments. It's very true that there might be a lot of the audience not in the "sweet spot." Some will get more right, some more left. I will say that this is still better than a stereo piano that sums to mono poorly, where the resulting boxy, phasey sound will now be coming out both sides of the PA on a mono system! The answer is: Don't use a poorly summed mono piano. 🙂 If none of the piano patches on your board sound good summed to mono, then, as I mentioned earlier, you can use just one side of the stereo signal (not summing the two sides), and you'll get a usable piano sound that has no phase issue. 1 Quote Maybe this is the best place for a shameless plug! Our now not-so-new new video at https://youtu.be/3ZRC3b4p4EI is a 40 minute adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "Prufrock" - check it out! And hopefully I'll have something new here this year. ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stokely Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 Yeah, but if you do that, make sure you test all your other patches Ask me how I know...I decided to try ye olde "right only" at a gig when mono was sounding like crap but hadn't really checked some of my synth patches. Some of them were along the lines of bright poly more toward the left, softer pad more toward the right...the end result was not good! I could see leslies and tremolo and other such effects being a problem as well without some attention, if you are running all of these from the same keyboard. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MathOfInsects Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 I can't ever imagine a situation where I would want them to pan hard L and hard R, even with a nice stereo set up. Maybe if one was one mono board and one was another, so they could mix them how they wanted? I've never come across this as a need, so I'm not sure what the use-case would be. Quote Now out! "Mind the Gap," a 24-song album of new material. www.joshweinstein.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CEB Posted December 12, 2023 Share Posted December 12, 2023 I have used hard panning on sound effects. Example, a zooming car in Rihanna’s Shut Up and Drive. The car goes from left side to the right. If the system was mono there was no movement. Some of my explosions samples are really cool in stereo. 1 Quote "It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne "A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!! So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.