Dedicated mono piano samples, overly deep dive

[EricN]

Howdy,
How to best do mono when playing live? Right channel trick? Mono button/menu? Sum the signals in the PA? Or just give the house two channels, look away, and hope it's okay. We've all done that.

The best answer might be to use dedicated samples from Nord, optimized to sound great in mono. This could be two identical samples L and R.

Or, interestingly, it could be two NEARLY identical L and R signals.

Either way (and in a perfect world):
L or R could be used alone.
L + R could be summed and used mono.
L + R could be run in stereo, panned hard L and R in the house mix. Interestingly (theoretically?), this is better if the signals are not clones. (Dave Rat talks on YouTube about the potential weirdness of dual mono.) We all run dual mono all the time, so clearly it's not a big big problem. But I am interested in playing with this and discovering if comb-filtering etc is audible.

In any of the above scenarios, the benefit of a dedicated mono sample set MIGHT be slightly better mono sound. The real benefit is that that you or the engineer CANNOT screw up during a hasty setup and sound-check. This or that channel, one or both, mono or stereo, it all works.

Nord, are you listening? I want this for the Velvet Grand. Everybody else (obvi) will want this for the White. And you folks are just fanatic enough to make this happen? We'll see.

Meantime, I am messing around in stereo with the Velvet Grand, on Layers A and B on my Stage 4:
Layer A to Output 1, going to one side of a stereo PA.
Layer B but with very subtle chorus, detune, delay, or unison to Output 2, going to the other side of the PA. I am hoping to distort the phase etc enough to make these L and R signals independent, and less likely to comb-filter. A better way might be to use two different but similar-sounding samples, one on each side.

It sounds good in stereo at home. I will let you know how this goes in my next gig with a stereo PA.

Is this all moot? My experience is that most house PA's are hardwired mono, or wired for stereo but used in mono anyway. And this is probably for the best.

Peace all. I look forward to your thoughts below.
E