Do you play live in Mono or Stereo?

[Mr_-G-]

If you PA man does not understand he needs to pan them in opposite directions, then you need a different PA man.

[funkyteaparty41]

Quick question.. I have an Electro 2.. There is no reverb setting on my board. Very upsetting. The dry organ is painful to my ears. I have a guitar reverb pedal (Shimverb) that sounds great, but am I only able to hook it up mono? Would like to plug in stereo but still have reverb.. Would I need a stereo reverb pedal?

[jpoelmans]

I actually don't see what's wrong with hard-panning a stereo signal left/right to the stereo bus? I think it's the least bad way to amplify a stereo signal:

Some stereo signals differ in phase, and when you combine them in one mono, you get a lot of phase cancellations (comb filtering), which are very obvious when you listen to them. The nord piano sounds are one of the types of signals who are very sensitive to this phenomenon.

Ok, when you hard-pan, the left part of the audience will have less of the higher keys in their sound, and the right part of the audience had less of the lower keys in their sound, so in that way it's a bad idea to hard-pan in a live setting. But anything less then hard panning gives you some degree of very nasty phase cancellation, with the culprit of nastyness with no panning at all, so I prefer hard panning a stereo signal, it sounds the smoothest, least aggressive.

In that perspective, another thing is for the keyboard player to not overdo stereo effects. Like the synth of Eurythmics sweet dreams, it features 2 layers of synth left and right, but that will go totally lost in a live setting.

[bluesbaba]

Good insights jpoelmans,thanks

[Nadroj]

With my Nord, I play in stereo (if I can). Other keyboards can sound great in mono, but I feel that for my Nord has to be in stereo to truly shine - otherwise I could get away with using my other keyboard. It doesn't sound great in my monitors in mono.

There are cases (at jams, or cramped jazz gigs where the size of the band means there aren't enough channels for me to run stereo) where I've run the Nord in mono, and it sounds great through FoH. But for monitoring, I like the Nord in stereo when we're at gigs where we do our own sound.

[magpie85]

I play in mono at home through a Roland KC 60 because I also have my Roland RD 700 GX playing through the same amp.

I play in stereo when I play at church because we have enough channels and the sound guys have always put all keyboards in stereo. I'm not complaining

[michael_C1]

I like to monitor myself in stereo and it makes me play better, and I prefer to send stereo to a board but often it has to be mono. Up until now I've been sending L channel only in mono situations, but I'm rethinking that.

[Nordrik]

I like to monitor myself in stereo and it makes me play better, and I prefer to send stereo to a board but often it has to be mono. Up until now I've been sending L channel only in mono situations, but I'm rethinking that.

What do you mean rethinking?
All I do is send Left out to the FOH, sometimes I forget to switch it over to mono also.

What's the best way to send mono ?

[c0wfunk]

"Quick question.. I have an Electro 2.. There is no reverb setting on my board. Very upsetting. The dry organ is painful to my ears. I have a guitar reverb pedal (Shimverb) that sounds great, but am I only able to hook it up mono? Would like to plug in stereo but still have reverb.. Would I need a stereo reverb pedal?"

I've solved this problem (wanted to add a minifooger delay) by using a mixer with an effects loop. The effect is going to be in mono and the dry signal in stereo but it actually sits together quite nicely.

[JonnyHightower]

Mine's connected in stereo in the house, and when out gigging I get it set up in stereo unless there's some crucial reason that won't work at a particular venue. I carry my own cables and two channel DI box just in case. The piano sounds better for it, so do pads, and it makes a huge difference to the leslie.