Nord User Forum

Couple questions if you please (I am somewhat new to live sound). Band is 3 or 4 vocalists w/acoustic guitars/mandolin/harmonica, keys, bass, drums. We mostly do small venue gigs (< 60 people) and small outdoor street fair type events. Sometimes I do sound and have mixer that has 8 mic and 6 line inputs and can accept low and high impedence inputs (4 channels switchable).

1. Should I use a DI box with Nord Stage Ex? I haven't so far an haven't had problems but have read about why a DI is useful- convert to low impedence balanced signal for long runs, protection from accidental phantom power, ground lifts. None of these issues have come up for me so far.

2. Is there any difference between using channels 1 & 2 out and just 1 out, i.e. are there sounds that benefit from stereo out? I mostly use just out 1 at gigs. I haven't noticed a difference. I mainly use Studio Grand 2, Deep E Piano, and a piano/organ split. Recently branching out to synth and clav sounds and layers via double panels.

3. If there is a need to use a direct box and stereo outs I suppose I need a 2 channel direct box?

Thanks.

Hi!!
in my opinion , if those gigs are small and you can directly go from your EX to the mixer with your cables , (if mixer and nord are not so far) you don't need a D.I. box. if there are not particular electrical issues in the room , there should be no problem....

If you use just one output , refer to page 15 of the manual and remember to put MONO OUT.... some keyboards "fells" just one jack and route all signal to mono out....but nord is NOT the case....so put mono out on....otherwise you loose half of the sound.

on my opinion , to have a bigger sound anyway , if you have decent speakers........go stereo anyway if you can....

hope it helps
cheers
Fab

Hi normalkeyboa!

You may wonna check that link http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/ ... rence.html

Generally speaking if your cable run between your keyboard and the mixer is less then 5 meters no need for DI. It can even be 10m. It depends on the the electromagnetic environment. You may get in trouble with if you play in a venue with big light system with long cable run between stage and mixer. You will hear some noise. That's why you find the majority of such places to use DIs. But I don't think you bring your own sound system to such places. These venues have serious PA and DIs as well. So I think there is no strong need for you to have your own DIs. As for the mono vs stereo: I would say that if you finally decide to buy DI - go for stereo one. The chances that you would need stereo in small clubs are low but still it's better to have possibility to use it.

Cheers,
Alex

Hi Fab & Alex, I don't see anything in my manual about "mono out", page 15 is about output levels for instruments and global effect. I do see on page 10 (section 3) it mentions use outs 1 and 2 as a pair for stereo and elsewhere in manual that "Studio Grand 2" is a stereo sample. I'm going to use stereo at gigs as much as I can. This week's gig I know club has stage with one DI box for keys so maybe I will use "Y" cable to sum outs 1 & 2 to get full signal. I'll at least take cable and test mono and summed stereo during sound check if time. This club has pro sound system w engineer and is fairly long run to mixer, probably couple hundred feet. Last time on this stage I just used out 1 and didn't notice difference but it was all I could do to just get my fingers to play right notes at right time, wasn't being super critical of sound.

Thanks for help, let me know if you have opinions about "Y" adapter.

Norman

normalkeyboa wrote:This week's gig I know club has stage with one DI box for keys so maybe I will use "Y" cable to sum outs 1 & 2 to get full signal. let me know if you have opinions about "Y" adapter.

You should not do this. To sum two or more outputs together you would need a mixer.

As far as I know, the Stage Ex does not have a "Mono out" menu option. I think he was referring to the Stage 2.

You can use either Output 3 or 4 to give you the correct mono out you need. However you would not have Reverb or the Compressor as they do not use these outputs.

To do this:

1. Go to the System Menu, Audio Routing: and select "Global".

2. Still in the System menu, set all six instrument Audio Outputs to either 3 or 4 (it doesn't matter which, they're both the same)

3. Then simply use Output Socket 3 or 4 on the back of the Stage.

4. Done

Yes....true....for page manual I was referring to NS 2
maybe there's not a mono mode for the whole signal.
Anyway I used to have an EX and I remembered something about mono signal in piano section....
I checked the EX piano panel picture and you can see "mono piano" written under panic button.
so....SHIFT - PANIC ..... and you've , at least , piano mono
other solution is , as Redleo said , to route all signals to 3 or 4....

For your gig , if there's a D.I. box for keyboard s, with a pro P.A. and techinician , maybe this is a STEREO D.I. (two channels in one D.I BOX )... in this case , you don't need any Y cable or mixer
check this out
cheers
Fab

RedLeo wrote:You should not do this. To sum two or more outputs together you would need a mixer.

This page shows a simple passive alternative to a mixer to add two signals into one.
http://www.rane.com/note109.html
Does anybody know if this would attenuate the signal a lot?

The "mono" button is perfect, I read the manual when I got the EX but forgot this part and when I checked the index (after reading first responses) the only "mono" mention is in synth section.Turns out the mono switch is documented on page 32. Incidentally, to turn stereo acoustic piano into mono you don't have hit shift, you just hit the mono button. Easy! Now I'm set up, if there is stereo direct box or mono I'm set either way with press of mono button, thanks so much!

Norman

normalkeyboa wrote:why a DI is useful- convert to low impedence balanced signal for long runs, protection from accidental phantom power, ground lifts. None of these issues have come up for me so far.

Hello,

I would like to understand the real danger, without DI, for a keyboard.
It's possible for the sound guy to accidentally switch on a phantom power on a keyboard line on the console, can this fry the keyboard ?
If the keyboard is connected to the amp (unbalanced) and then the amp (xlr direct output) connected to the console, does this protect the keyboard ? is the amp protected as well ?
The second point about ground loops, what can happen exactly ?

Any answer will be very appreciated ( should we buy a DI in any case , a 100€ DI vs a 3000$ keyboard ... )

frantzkb wrote:It's possible for the sound guy to accidentally switch on a phantom power on a keyboard line on the console, can this fry the keyboard ?

Yes it can. Exactly what happens depends on the situation. If there is damage, it's not likely to destroy your whole keyboard, rather it would likely damage the output circuits. This would would still require professional repair, but you don't need to think of your whole keyboard becoming a smoking ruin. Phantom power isn't *that* dangerous. Quite possibly no damage would be done at all.

frantzkb wrote:If the keyboard is connected to the amp (unbalanced) and then the amp (xlr direct output) connected to the console, does this protect the keyboard ? is the amp protected as well ?

The keyboard would almost certainly be ok, it's the amp that could be damaged. but remember there are no guarantees about what might happen.

An important point to note is that Phantom power will only be found on MIC inputs on a desk. Large professional desks are usually all Mic input, so you would always need a DI for your keyboards, but such a desk would usually have a sound engineer who would have DI boxes for you to use anyway. Smaller desks designed to be bought and used by the band itself often come with a mixture of Mic and Line inputs. If you use the Line inputs for your keyboards, you don't have to worry about Phantom power at all. Line inputs usually have jack sockets so you can plug into these using normal jack-to-jack leads.

frantzkb wrote:The second point about ground loops, what can happen exactly ?

If you are unlucky enough to get a ground loop, what happens is that you will get a VERY loud humming sound through the whole PA. It doesn't do any damage, but it will probably be impossible to continue until the ground loop is found and eliminated.


A third issue which you didn't mention is that in some situations there can be a lot of electrical "noise". A common example would be lighting rigs which can produce interference which would probably sound like a very loud buzzing sound. The way to eliminate this is by using Balanced lines. If the outputs of your keyboards are Unbalanced (all Nords have Unbalanced outputs), then using DI boxes (which have Balanced outputs) and Balanced mic leads into a Balanced mic input on the desk should help reduce this interference quite substantially.

frantzkb wrote:should we buy a DI in any case , a 100€ DI vs a 3000$ keyboard ... )

I think this question kind of answers itself

Personally, I don't own any DI boxes - for small local gigs our PA has Line inputs that I use, and for large serious gigs, the PA engineer will always have DI boxes anyway. If you play in a wide variety of venues where you don't really know what to expect, or you are in situations where the mains electricity supply is not reliable or stable, then it wouldn't do any harm to have a DI box with you just in case.