Question: “Stereo” out of a mono PA system?

[jazzpiano88]

39 minutes ago, MathOfInsects said:

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. 

 

It's a way you achieve stereo isolation with two discrete channels on a mixer, as opposed to a "single stereo channel" such as the Key Largo.

Panning hard left and right is electrically equivalent to this set up with the Key Largo. 

 

The left and right in the key largo are electrically separated internally (equivalent to the hard left and right two discrete channel setup).  Yes you have to mix the discrete channels on the single input per channel mixer but it's a workaround to achieve stereo.   

 

 

 

 

[Reezekeys]

21 hours ago, Baldwin Funster said:

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. 

 

Less for who to deal with - you or the FOH person? Most boards have stereo channels where it's one fader, one set of knobs for efx send, eq, etc. Isn't it really the same to deal with? Even if it's two separate mono channels panned, a sound person can pretty easily adjust levels - it just takes two finders instead of one. (On second thought... ) 🙂 

 

As far as being heard or not, that's another issue - and running stereo, mono, 5.1 or 7.1, ain't gonna matter!

[Baldwin Funster]

The question that comes to my mind is that if your (no one here in particular) mono piano sounds so bad and your stereo piano sounds so good maybe your piano actually sux and you are being bedazzled by the chorus added for stereo effect. Try auditioning the mono pianos before buying your live board. 

Unsolicited advice to no one in particular. 

[Reezekeys]

1 hour ago, AnotherScott said:

4 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.

 

If a FOH person wants to mute one side of my stereo feed and pan the other side to center, fine. Their job is to make things sound good out front. I'm not gonna know! (Of course, in actuality that's not gonna happen for me. No sound person is going to be waiting to see exactly when I play my acoustic piano patch, then quickly adjust like that. I play other sounds as well, AP is actually a very small part of my arsenal on my road gig).

[cassdad]

4 hours ago, jazzpiano88 said:

 

It's a way you achieve stereo isolation with two discrete channels on a mixer, as opposed to a "single stereo channel" such as the Key Largo.

Panning hard left and right is electrically equivalent to this set up with the Key Largo. 

 

The left and right in the key largo are electrically separated internally (equivalent to the hard left and right two discrete channel setup).  Yes you have to mix the discrete channels on the single input per channel mixer but it's a workaround to achieve stereo.   

 

 

 

 

THIS!!!  Thank you, JAZZPIANO88.  This is why you would want to pan “hard” left and right = because that is called “stereo”!  Stereo IS “panned hard left and hard right”!  And as far as the comment of a 50 foot wide piano… that’s ridiculous.  Even at home, I’d dare say most people’s stereo system speakers are at least 8 feet apart…. and that does not mean listening to a piano is like listening to an 8-foot wide piano!  It’s called stereo, that’s all.  Apologies if that offends anyone - I certainly don’t intend to.  I really don’t see why a FOH system can’t be stereo.  Agreed, not all people will hear left and right equally.  But even in your home, if listening to your home stereo system, rarely is everyone sitting exactly in the sweet spot.  Yet stereo still sounds far better than mono.  At least to me.

[cassdad]

4 hours ago, Baldwin Funster said:

The question that comes to my mind is that if your (no one here in particular) mono piano sounds so bad and your stereo piano sounds so good maybe your piano actually sux and you are being bedazzled by the chorus added for stereo effect. Try auditioning the mono pianos before buying your live board. 

Unsolicited advice to no one in particular. 

It’s not “chorus” that gives the stereo effect.  It’s the fact that the piano is sampled / recorded in stereo, ie. similar to one microphone on the left and one on the rigtht…. similar to having 2 ears.  

[Reezekeys]

IMO chorus and phasing, or a spinning leslie, can sound fine reproduced in mono. Samples recorded in stereo, well, not so much (imo again). Reverb I would say a "soft no" to mono - you lose the "spaciousness" that the effect is meant to convey - however my old ears have heard those early recordings with echo chambers, and a lot of those are in mono - some of them hard-pan the "echo" to one side! I do add verb to my sounds sometime (mostly when playing ballads, to add some "tails" to percussive chords) - another reason I prefer stereo for my rig regardless of what it might sound like up front.

[Stokely]

18 hours ago, cassdad said:

It’s not “chorus” that gives the stereo effect.  It’s the fact that the piano is sampled / recorded in stereo, ie. similar to one microphone on the left and one on the rigtht…. similar to having 2 ears.  

Yep, no chorus I've ever heard or seen applied. Take any stereo recording and collapse to mono.  Suckage to varying degrees. 

Some of my keyboards have had mono patches and they aren't necessarily any better-sounding than the stereo versions collapsed to mono (which is likely what they did).  I tried out a software piano with a mono mic recording and it was even worse for my needs (it was quite "roomy" in a bad way, probably from having to back off a single mic to get the whole piano, though that might also have been a production decision.)

 

Eh, what can you do.  Pick the best you have and go with it.  I'll continue to use stereo with our PA, as I can both send stereo to FOH AND monitor that way, but other times I go mono and do my best to ensure the patches don't jump around in volume.  Helps to only be using one keyboard these days.

[Baldwin Funster]

I used the term chorus loosely as a substitute for whatever secret sauce the sound developers add to make the stereo ear candy that sells more stereo pianos. However I deeply doubt the stereo is just 2 differently placed mics panned hard R & L and sampled. There us clearly some hype added. Some use phase differences. Some use EQ differences. Some get crazy and have the low keys on the left.

Whatever. I don't deal with it because I only play organ at gigs and my leslie sim sounds great in mono.

[Docbop]

2 hours ago, Baldwin Funster said:

I used the term chorus loosely as a substitute for whatever secret sauce the sound developers add to make the stereo ear candy that sells more stereo pianos. However I deeply doubt the stereo is just 2 differently placed mics panned hard R & L and sampled. There us clearly some hype added. Some use phase differences. Some use EQ differences. Some get crazy and have the low keys on the left.

Whatever. I don't deal with it because I only play organ at gigs and my leslie sim sounds great in mono.

 

Original electronic chorus was the Roland Jazz Chorus amp  it bounced the sound between the two speakers that were side by side in the cabinet might as well been mono.   Then came Roland Jazz chorus pedal and the BOSS CE pedal (Roland and Boss are the same company) and both were mono they were the pedal that really made the Chorus sound popular.    A number of name guitarists were known for using the Roland Jazz Chorus amp, but what I didn't know until today is Roland Jazz Chorus amp was meant for keyboard players.  I don't remember keyboardist using the Roland Jazz Chorus amps.  So the chorus sound became popular from being used in mono pedals.  Stereo pedals came later. 

 

UPDATE:

I just went back to YT to cruse about a bit and stumbled on this and like how they talked about using the chorus pedal to fatten the sound more that spread it. 

 

 

[Reezekeys]

1 hour ago, Baldwin Funster said:

I used the term chorus loosely as a substitute for whatever secret sauce the sound developers add to make the stereo ear candy that sells more stereo pianos. However I deeply doubt the stereo is just 2 differently placed mics panned hard R & L and sampled. There us clearly some hype added. Some use phase differences. Some use EQ differences. Some get crazy and have the low keys on the left.

Whatever. I don't deal with it because I only play organ at gigs and my leslie sim sounds great in mono.

 

Secret sauce? Any straight-up acoustic piano I've ever heard in a plugin or on today's DPs is a stereo-sampled piano. With two mics - what makes you doubt this?

 

Some plugins have multiple mic positions - close, near, far, room, etc. But each perspective is recorded in stereo. And yes, I've seen a mono piano in a plugin too - but it was specifically referred to as such. Most pianos these days are stereo, no sauce added. BTW I agree (as I said above), leslies or sims sound fine in mono. Not so much acoustic pianos, imo.

[Stokely]

I also have not had issues with leslies either, the ones I've tended to use have sounded pretty close in mono.

Pianos are the main problem child for me.  Rhodes, strings, all fine.

I have also hit some really bad phasing/cancellation with certain synth patches, and often it's the effects.  I've had this happen on stock patches from the two Yamahas I've owned more than my other keyboards.   Put the two sides together and the thing half disappears.  Those are the patches I have to alter and "mono-ize" or otherwise just ensure work in either stereo or mono as long as I'm resolved to keep making my own life difficult by trying to do both   To be sure if I was 100% confident that I had level patches in both I'd feel more confident monitoring in stereo while FOH gets mono (I can do this via a Rolls headphone amp at most gigs) so that one is just me being lazy.

 

[Baldwin Funster]

47 minutes ago, Reezekeys said:

 

Secret sauce? Any straight-up acoustic piano I've ever heard in a plugin or on today's DPs is a stereo-sampled piano. With two mics - what makes you doubt this?

 

Some plugins have multiple mic positions - close, near, far, room, etc. But each perspective is recorded in stereo. And yes, I've seen a mono piano in a plugin too - but it was specifically referred to as such. Most pianos these days are stereo, no sauce added. BTW I agree (as I said above), leslies or sims sound fine in mono. Not so much acoustic pianos, imo.

My reason for doubting is precisely the problem that is being discussed.

A pure recording made into a sample should sound good by itself and more good paired with the other matched channel of the stereo pair. Yet the complaint is that the mono sound of one channel doesn't sound good. Not everyone has said this but it seems like at least half that respond think this split off mono sound is lacking.

[hrestov]

In mono isn’t good for phase cancellation. Because 2 mics records the same sound, but from different distances, so different phase. And when you sum the same sound with a different phase a part of the sound is cancelled. There is no solution, because the distance from the source is different for every note. So if you change, for example the phase of R o L you solve the phase cancellation in some notes, but make worse in other notes. 
 

if you use only one mic (so you take only R or L) you have not phase cancellation, but you have more prominent sound from the right part of the keyboard (or left part). Generally with eq you can re balance that. 
 

Personally I use stereo, but if they asked me mono I get only R output. I make my sounds and I balance volumes listening only R. I don’t use stereo effects. I don’t pan patch. I monitor from R if o had one monitor and in stereo it I had in ear. 
 

yamaha piano (Cfx in yamaha Cp73) sounds good from R output. Nord pianos doesn’t sound good in no mono ways (L, R or L+R)

[Reezekeys]

8 hours ago, Baldwin Funster said:

Yet the complaint is that the mono sound of one channel doesn't sound good. Not everyone has said this but it seems like at least half that respond think this split off mono sound is lacking.

 

No, it's combining both L & R channels of a piano sample together that doesn't sound good - creating mono from both L & R, as opposed to the mono sound of one channel as you mention. That "one channel mono" sound might not be too good either, but at least it doesn't exhibit the phase cancellation issues that summing both L & R sides to mono does.

[SMcD]

I'm thinking about making the switch to IEM's soon. The trouble is that I'm completely deaf in one ear, so I'm stuck using mono. At least the single IEM will prevent me from changing my stage sound every time I move my head.

 

A lot of DI boxes have that "180" button that switches the phase of the Right input, ostensibly to get around phase cancellation. Has anyone had any luck making DP's sound better summed to mono that way?

 

If not...damn, my kingdom for a mixer with some kind of "phase-free summing" algorithm built in, like the Nords apparently have onboard.

[Docbop]

I need to try and find my Back to Mono button I got at a Phil Spector seminar back in the early 70's.  Hearing Phil talk about his big hits how each part of the song was going to make it a hit for different reason than the other parts of the song. I think these buttons were made by one of the Beatles when they were working on the Let It Be album. 

 

 

 

[Reezekeys]

A few years ago I posted an unlisted video comparing three mono piano sounds - left channel only, right channel only, and left & right summed:

 

 

I'll be durned but I can't find the thread I originally posted this in, so I don't know which is which - and I sure don't remember!

 

To be very honest, listening to my boring noodling I think any of those three sounds would rate "acceptable" coming out a PA system into a room. That's just my opinion of course, and it also applies only to this particular piano - the Native Instruments "Grandeur" - which I don't use on gigs! 🙂 The one I use is NI's older "New York" and the very few times I've had to go mono with it have not been very successful, imo - but on my stereo rig I much prefer it to the Grandeur, for other reasons not having to do with the stereo-mono debate.

[hrestov]

11 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

 

No, it's combining both L & R channels of a piano sample together that doesn't sound good - creating mono from both L & R, as opposed to the mono sound of one channel as you mention. That "one channel mono" sound might not be too good either, but at least it doesn't exhibit the phase cancellation issues that summing both L & R sides to mono does.

no, if you flip the phase you’ll still have phase cancellations. Different cancellations, in other notes, but still cancellations. It’s impossible to avoid phase cancellation because they depend from the distance between the note played and the two mic. The mics remain in the same position, but the note are in different position. 
 

No mixer can avoid phase cancellation. And also nord keyboards. With nord piano sample there are a lot of phase cancellations. Maybe more than other companies, also with mono button. 

[Reezekeys]

22 minutes ago, hrestov said:

11 hours ago, Reezekeys said:

 

No, it's combining both L & R channels of a piano sample together that doesn't sound good - creating mono from both L & R, as opposed to the mono sound of one channel as you mention. That "one channel mono" sound might not be too good either, but at least it doesn't exhibit the phase cancellation issues that summing both L & R sides to mono does.

no, if you flip the phase you’ll still have phase cancellations. Different cancellations, in other notes, but still cancellations. It’s impossible to avoid phase cancellation because they depend from the distance between the note played and the two mic. The mics remain in the same position, but the note are in different position. 

 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding but when I say "one channel mono" I mean listening to either the left or right side only - so where is the phase cancellation happening? Dont you need to combine two separate signals to produce that? We're only listening to one.

[Stokely]

I should really experiment with right only, based on some of these posts and others I've read in other threads.   I know I'll have some work to do on some of the synth patches.  As I said previously, make sure you test things at home before trying it, on all patches.

Using Right only shouldn't have phase cancellations, but of course you may get a volume tail-off as you go up the keyboard (or down if they have their patches set up opposite).   Any fx that pan would turn into on/off and there might be weirdness in general with effects.   How much tailing off would depend on how extreme the patch programming is and how much room sound/reverb you have going on.   I do get what Baldwin is saying, there is programming beyond just the mics I think (but I never really thought about it before in that way).  Just today I was going through the Forte's pianos and for (presumably) the same set of samples (9 ft grand, or 7ft) there were varying degrees of stereo happening.   

 

[hrestov]

In live situation, both in mono or in stereo, you have to avoid pan effects. And also panning patch. It’s useless.
 

The only problem of taking only R is that you have to eq a little, maybe. And if there is too much differenze of high/low from R/L it means that this piano sample would have problem also in a stereo setting. 
 

i just try this evening to switch my patch from stereo to mono (only R), listening from two speaker in a little/medium room at home. I don’t think that I like more the stereo piano Than the mono… in reality not too much difference, mono is more in face. Stereo is a little more enveloping, but it lose clarity. 

[cassdad]

3 hours ago, hrestov said:

In live situation, both in mono or in stereo, you have to avoid pan effects. And also panning patch. It’s useless.
 

The only problem of taking only R is that you have to eq a little, maybe. And if there is too much differenze of high/low from R/L it means that this piano sample would have problem also in a stereo setting. 
 

i just try this evening to switch my patch from stereo to mono (only R), listening from two speaker in a little/medium room at home. I don’t think that I like more the stereo piano Than the mono… in reality not too much difference, mono is more in face. Stereo is a little more enveloping, but it lose clarity. 

What brand / model / Voice are you using?

[Stokely]

That is not at all my experience with stereo pianos in mono, but I certainly haven't played all keyboards/libraries out there   

Usually they get a kind of nasal/boxy sounding (I assume this is phasing), and have less clarity to my ear.   And in the worst cases they lose a few db, as I say I had an engineer bring it to my attention saying my piano was disappearing compared to other patches.  In my ears (stereo) it was loud and proud.

 

R only should give you all the high end and lose some (how much would depend) of the low end, so that might be fine.  I high pass my keys (and our guitarist does the same on his channel) on the main mixer as it is.   I'm going to experiment a bit with the Nord Stage.  The biggest hassle will be that I'm fairly sure I'll have to do some work on some of the synth patches but if the piano is improved it'll be worth it.

[ProfD]

Regardless of whether playing in mono or stereo, it's a great practice to 1) strip sounds of having too much reverb or effects and 2) insure volume levels match when changing sounds.

 

Make life easier for the sound person/engineer by optimizing KB rig as much as possible and they will be happy to put keys in the mix.😎

[jazzpiano88]

I've been thinking of trying a mid-side recording with a 90 degree condenser separation on the Sony D50 on my grand.   Read the two .wav channels into Matlab and process them that way back into L R Stereo.   Condenser pattern may be too wide, but just a thought.

[cassdad]

Well, this thread spurred me on to try a little experiment which I did today.  My new Motion Sound KP-612SX has several “outs” (see pic)…. 2 of them being “Left Out” and “Right Out” (both XLR, assumedly for feeding FOH or recording).  Surprisingly, it also has a single 1/4 inch jack Out labeled “Mono Out”.  So I played piano and concurrently recorded 3 tracks into Logic Pro:  Left & Right Outs to tracks 1 & 2, and Mono Out to Track 3.  Then, listening thru headphones, I alternated playing back just tracks 1 & 2, and then just track 3.  (I also played back all 3 tracks at the same time, but no conclusions from that). The stereo of playing back just tracks 1 & 2 was a far, far better piano sound than just playing track 3 (mono).  However, I must say that, the mono (track 3) by itself was not bad….  it was just, well, mono.  But I did not hear any glaring negatives, no severe comb filtering, etc.  It sounded, let’s say “reasonably good” for mono - exactly what I’d expect.

 

I do not know what, if any, processing Motion Sound’s “Mono Out” jack/line has (none mentioned in the manual).  However, I think I can conclude that if I had to only provide the sound person a “mono” out - this would be acceptable.  My 1st preference would still be to provide a left & right XLR and tell them to pan “full left & full right”.

[SMcD]

7 hours ago, hrestov said:

no, if you flip the phase you’ll still have phase cancellations. Different cancellations, in other notes, but still cancellations. It’s impossible to avoid phase cancellation because they depend from the distance between the note played and the two mic. The mics remain in the same position, but the note are in different position. 
 

No mixer can avoid phase cancellation. And also nord keyboards. With nord piano sample there are a lot of phase cancellations. Maybe more than other companies, also with mono button. 

So the 180 button on a DI box wouldn't solve anything, then? Just create a complimentary set of phase cancellation problems?

 

What is that button even good for, then?

[Stokely]

1 hour ago, ProfD said:

Regardless of whether playing in mono or stereo, it's a great practice to 1) strip sounds of having too much reverb or effects and 2) insure volume levels match when changing sounds.

 

Make life easier for the sound person/engineer by optimizing KB rig as much as possible and they will be happy to put keys in the mix.😎

Ironically one of the gigs I had this weekend reminded me of this...I'm probably going to go through all my patches and remove reverb (I don't have all that much on most of them).  We played in a big, echoey "ballroom" (corporate gig) that looked great but was closer to a gymnasium acoustically than any place I've played in a long while.  Even the patrons talking around their dinners was overly loud.  Our sound person removed all effects but the guitarist and I have it on our patches and that certainly wasn't a good idea in that place. 

 I'm kicking around the idea of getting a pedal and pre-connecting to my Key Largo, but honestly I could probably just add a bit of verb on the main mixer (and our sound guy could adjust to taste out front).  I wouldn't hear it without some kind of adjustment though as I use a Behringer pm16 that gets the first 16 channels and not the verb returns; I could probably route the reverb returns to an unused bus or even set a verb as an insert and adjust wet/dry I guess.   Any time we play with another PA it would be up to that engineer to add effects if they want.   

Anderton's did a pretty cool blind shoutout of a bunch of pedals, using guitar unfortunately but you could definitely hear the differences.  To nobody's surprise a Strymon won it but a cheap (mono only fwiw) JHS 3-button reverb competed very well with it.

 

[Baldwin Funster]

2 hours ago, cassdad said:

Well, this thread spurred me on to try a little experiment which I did today.  My new Motion Sound KP-612SX has several “outs” (see pic)…. 2 of them being “Left Out” and “Right Out” (both XLR, assumedly for feeding FOH or recording).  Surprisingly, it also has a single 1/4 inch jack Out labeled “Mono Out”.  So I played piano and concurrently recorded 3 tracks into Logic Pro:  Left & Right Outs to tracks 1 & 2, and Mono Out to Track 3.  Then, listening thru headphones, I alternated playing back just tracks 1 & 2, and then just track 3.  (I also played back all 3 tracks at the same time, but no conclusions from that). The stereo of playing back just tracks 1 & 2 was a far, far better piano sound than just playing track 3 (mono).  However, I must say that, the mono (track 3) by itself was not bad….  it was just, well, mono.  But I did not hear any glaring negatives, no severe comb filtering, etc.  It sounded, let’s say “reasonably good” for mono - exactly what I’d expect.

 

I do not know what, if any, processing Motion Sound’s “Mono Out” jack/line has (none mentioned in the manual).  However, I think I can conclude that if I had to only provide the sound person a “mono” out - this would be acceptable.  My 1st preference would still be to provide a left & right XLR and tell them to pan “full left & full right”.

You should try one more experiment. Ok 3. Listen off the mono out and pull the left input and just listen to the right. Then pull the right and just listen to the left (via the mono out).

Finally listen the right side as being output by the right main out.

More finally listen to the left side from the left out.

Why? Narrow down if the motion sound is summing mono or not. I guess it probably is.

And to find out which sound routing option will give the best possible mono sound.

And all you have to do is pull a couple of cables here and there.