Nord User Forum

Hi all,

I have a question regarding live setup for a band. I've been doing a lot of reading online but am more confused than ever truth be told so thought I would ask here. Its probably worth saying upfront that the majority of times we won't have a FOH sound guy, we'll be doing the PA setup and FOH mix ourselves.

So - I'm playing a NP2. In band practice sessions to date I've been taking the left and right outputs from the NP2 and putting them into a stereo DI box (A Radial PROD2 specifically). Then I take left and right XLR cables from the DI box and put them into adjacent channels on the PA mixer and pan them around 75% left and right respectively. This is what I would consider an optimal setup (but please correct me if I'm wrong). I then have an aux send from the desk to my mono monitor.

Now for a couple of reasons, the rest of the band want me to stop hogging two channels on the mixer and reduce to one channel. So as far as I understand it I have 2 options.

1. Play the NP2 in mono output and just go through the PA in mono. Fine I guess, but some of the patches I've created sound so amazing in stereo and so pants in mono through headphones that I wonder if that will translate in a live scenario.
2. Get rid of the DI box and go straight into a single stereo channel via 1/4 inch jacks. My understanding is that this could add noise and could pose a risk to the keyboard?

Any thoughts on this - which option would you go for or would you just demand the two channels
Any alternative ideas that would work well that I've not considered?

TIA!

If you're talking cable lengths of less than about thirty feet/ten meters, forget about the DI boxes and go directly into a stereo channel.

Balanced cabling eliminates interference, but that's really only relevant for longer cable runs.

Do the other members of your band have amps for their instruments? Maybe you should consider getting some powered speakers to plug you instrument in instead of through the PA system. Don't use a guitar amp though. Check the threads on this forum that talk about various powered speakers people use.

+1 Analogika

hl1982 wrote:put them into adjacent channels on the PA mixer and pan them around 75% left and right respectively. This is what I would consider an optimal setup (but please correct me if I'm wrong).

Why 75%? You would benefit using the pan fully R and L to exploit the stereo image.
Like in your case you, we do not have too many channels so I use the stereo channel of our mixer (a 14 channel Peavey). My NS2 is set like this:
Left Ch-> 60W roland cube to monitor myself, from the cube I take the recording (or the effect send) out to the Left input of stereo channel in the mixer.
Right Ch -> directly to the R input of the stereo channel in the mixer.
I never had an issue with noise or output level that required a direct box. Large venues might be a different story, but we've never done one of those.
The only detail is that because the L channel goes through the cube first, the level of the L is not exactly the same as the R, so during the setup I use the synth section of the NS2 with a very slow Pan effect (and in Hold, so it keeps sounding when I am not at the kbd) so I can check how much signal comes out from the speakers at the front. That is then adjusted with the Pan knob of the stereo channel.
Maybe others will suggest better solutions, but this is very simple and works well for us.

Thanks for the responses - really helpful. To answer a Q raised:

Mr_-G- wrote:Why 75%? You would benefit using the pan fully R and L to exploit the stereo image.

The way I understood it was that fully panning left and right is great for people in the middle of an audience, but those on the right hand side say, will only hear the right channel and none of the left. the 75% pan was to try and eliminate some of this. Its just something I had read elsewhere though and I'm not that experienced with live setups so if full panning is the way to go then I'll do that in future.

hl1982 wrote: so if full panning is the way to go then I'll do that in future.

Stay with the 75%!

hard left and hard right prevents phase cancellation, which may be not a big deal in most situations, but may cause concerns in others

What are the reasons, your mates want you to play mono? I wouldn't do that, because Nord pianos and rhodes don't sound good in mono.

75% should be no problem. Your thoughts are correct on that. I also wouldn't hard pan.

Duplobaustein wrote:What are the reasons, your mates want you to play mono?

It's not so much that they want me to play in mono - more that they don't want me taking up 2 channels on the mixer. From the sounds of responses so far I'm thinking I'll lose the DI box and go straight into a stereo channel via 1/4 inch jacks.