live keyboard compression

[koolkid]

im setting up synths for live sound,through a mixer with eq and into the power amp and speakers

 

what does anyone recommend as far as compression/limiting/gate goes and eq as well

 

im finding that especially with horns and synth sounds the notes below middle c are thunderous and i lose all power above middle c

[Tusker]

Originally posted by koolkid:

im finding that especially with horns and synth sounds the notes below middle c are thunderous and i lose all power above middle c

Hmhh, sounds like something that is frequency dependant and may be caused by your sounds or the PA. I hate to eq much at all. Get the sounds the way I like them and play them. Very occasionally I have to cut back on brightness or something... I will use the low pass filters in the synths for that.

 

As to compression.... It may be that you want it for piano or something percussive. I have a very compressed piano sound (as an effected sound), but most of the time, I am envious of our (uncompressed) acoustic guitar player's dynamic range. I do have a couple of clav sounds that are very variable, but most of the time, I wish I could get more dynamic range out of the keyboards with more control.

 

So, no I don't compress anything.... yet. I may consider a tube preamp for some of the sounds though.

 

Cheers,

 

Jerry

[cg1155]

yeah, I don't know about your PA's capabilities or your own setup's capabilities but it sounds like your main problem is that all the amp's power goes to the bass on those low notes leaving you no power for high notes. A biamped system (either with a crossover and 2 amps into a biampable cab or a powered speaker ala Mackie SRM450) may solve your problem by reserving power for the highs (by way of a dedicated amp). Just a thought, and not necessarily cheap/easy to do. What I do is just find the patches that have these problems and then adjust the patch's EQ to fix it.

 

-Casey

[Rick K.]

I agree. Your volume problem sounds like a patch issue.

 

As to the compression issue, I don't compress my keys and prefer to only tweak the eq slightly. I do, however, have overall compression on the entire band. This helps blend the overall mix of instruments and voices.

 

Rick