Oasys does not sound as good live in mono. Why?

[beersoretus]

Hi,
What is the best way to accurately reproduce live what I hear under headphones? If I take an output from left (mono) and run it through the PA, or through a keyboard amp, it just sounds so mortal, so hollow and cheap. Are there settings I need to adjust? Even if I run it through a mixer and headphones, the sounds are nothing like they are directly out of the machine. It seems the actual tone changes, sounds mid-rangey, like a less expensive keyboard. (Especially piano settings.) Please let me know if you have some ideas to remedy this.

[sirCombatWombat]

The sound you hear is directly related to the quality of your speaker(s), the amp contributes too but not so heavily. I am not aware of any system that could improve the sound of bad speakers significantly. Of course the space around you can influence the sound, for example playing in a concrete basement sounds horrible without heavy acoustic treatment. More info about your system would probably help.

[Sharp]

Also don't play in mono.

I don't understand how you would think that's going to give you the same quality of sound as playing in stereo, or what you are hearing on headphones.

Regards.
Sharp.

[beersoretus]

Most bands have a PA system that is set up in mono, as is ours. There is no way to keep the Oasys in Stereo without changing out our PA System. Also, stereo PA's are tricky because anyone on one side of the room or the other will not hear the sound coming from the opposite speaker. As to the quality of the speakers or the room, it is not either that is the problem. We have top quality gear. Are there any settings internally that can be changed to adjust for the mono degradation?

Thanks for your interest.
Michael

[Ray]

Most bands have a PA system that is set up in mono, as is ours. There is no way to keep the Oasys in Stereo without changing out our PA System. Also, stereo PA's are tricky because anyone on one side of the room or the other will not hear the sound coming from the opposite speaker. As to the quality of the speakers or the room, it is not either that is the problem. We have top quality gear. Are there any settings internally that can be changed to adjust for the mono degradation?

Thanks for your interest.
Michael

Hi,

I use the Oasys live through a 7.5 kW stereo QSC/JBL PA. In reality, most keyboard sounds are only stereo in that one side is slightly different to the other (eg chorus, phase differences). It is that effect which makes sounds more full through a PA.

If you are on one side of the room there is little/no difference. But you would have to be almost centre to hear the full true stereo effect.

We send voice, bass and guitar as effectively mono signals. The Roland TD20K drums all have slight stereo panning although the bass drum and snare are efectively mono. It is the Oasys (and Wavestation, Roland X6) which benefit.

No real way around it. A stereo PA is a must if you want the best out of your keyboards sounds live.

Best wishes,

Ray.

[Charlie]

We always play keyboards stereo. For normal keyboard-sounds this works nicely. Still it's never like headphones. Amps, speakers and the room itself will alter the sound - no matter if "top-quality-gear" or normal one is used. And IMHO this is good - you can't copy the "live-feeling".

[sirCombatWombat]

Panning all your sounds hard left could help, that ensures that all the elements of the program are coming out from the one jack.
In combi and seq mode this is very easy, in program mode you have to check that nothing modulates the pan.

Btw. unlike most synths the OASYS includes also true stereo sounds.

[Kevin Nolan]

beersoretus

The Oasys is a stereo instrument. Hence if you feed it's L-R into into mono you will potentially encounter all sorts of phasing issues which will cause harmonic distortion, loss of siganl etc...

Feeding just the L or R into a mono channel is not much better - you're then loosing half of what you normally expect from the OASYS, and the audible effect is far worse than just loosing half of what you expect.

There should be absolutely no reason why you should not be able to set up even the simplest PA system in stereo these days. Even miniscule mixers and PA systems are in stereo.

Solutions for you include:

1. Configure your PA for Stereo
2. If only separate amp/speakers being used with no mixer, use two for your OASYS.
3. Reprogram all required sounds to play in MONO. This will involve you choosing non stereo samples, removing all stereo effects and routing your programs to just one output.

In a nutshell, there' s definitely nothing wrong with your OASYS - it's most likely that you need to do a little more configuration to get the best from it, either by changing your PAS setup or reprogramming the OASYS.

[Sharp]

Most bands have a PA system that is set up in mono, as is ours.

Guitar Effects are in stereo, Mic reverb & keyboards too. Honestly I don't know of anyone who plays in mono. To send any stereo signal to a mono amp is like going out of your way to generate a crap sound.

Going from a Stereo signal to Mono is just asking for Phase problems.

Regards.
Sharp.

[sologuy]

You need to send the outputs in stereo under any circumstances, mono system or stereo. That means use two inputs on the board for left and right and pan them butterfly-fashion. The quality throuogh a mono system will never be as good as stereo, but if you use just one ouptput, you are using just one side of chorus, reverb and whatever other fx are imbedded into the programs or combis. This is my experience

[beersoretus]

Hey, guys, all good replies and thanks for your time. Experiment time--will give the stereo PA a try. I'm relieved to find that it's your opinion the mono sound is as bad as I think it sounds.
mb

[jg::]

I don't agree that it's just a case of mono vs stereo.

Although my Oasys never leaves my home studio, I've played live with an assortment of Korg keyboards for years. 99% of the time it's mono. Mono monitoring for me, even if it might be stereo out front. The good monitors sound good, the bad ones sound bad, funnily enough.

I agree that stereo is nice, and often desirable. But not always achievable. In fact, in large halls, too much stereo separate is actually *not* desirable. Most of the audience aren't in the sweet spot!

I think it's the quality of your live monitoring. Amp/speakers. You did mention "keyboard amp"?

jg::

[mdh]

I have a Roland KC-550 (keyboard amp) which doubles as my guitar amp. If I crank it all the way up it can be heard a couple of suburbs away. Anyhoo I discovered recently that if I plug in a pair of Sennheiser HD555's to the phones output on the GT-8 (preamp) I get a significantly better sound than the output of the left (mono) channel to the amp.

Conclusion:
1) always run stereo
2) good headphones will pretty much always sound better no matter what

It's pretty much the same with the O; running stereo to the amp still doesn't sound quite as good as the Sennheiser (or the ATH-A700's it replaced: attention headphone buyers, get phones that adapt 6mm to 3mm not the other way around!)

[kenackr]

Regarding why the sound is different between mono "live" at a gig and stereo headphones does rely on most of the factors already mentioned.

The stage musician will never get the same quality sound (especially when it's mono) that a studio musician will get (using stereo head phones).

The stage musician is all ways outside the "sweet spot" because the stage is usually at the end of a performance hall or room. The "sweet spot" is known as the "Primary sound field". Which means that almost all of the sound reaching the sweet spot has not bounced off of anything in it's travel to that space.

Sound, as we all know, bounces off of hard surfaces (just like playing pool) and will loose energy every time it does so and having gone extra distance (after the bounce) will be out of sync with the primary sound field. This is one of the reasons for stage monitors, to cut thru the garble of reflected waves normally present on the stage.

When you use stereo head phones there is little or no bouncing of any sound and if there is any at all the distance it travels inside the ear is so miniscule that it is not really out of sync with the primary wave. Also remember that there are no hard surfaces in the ear to bounce off of.

If you want it to sound the same as when you use headphones, then use headphones at the gig OR get a separate monitoring channel for yourself and use in-ear monitors and tweak them during sound check.

Finally, the mind is a strange thing. When you are playing by yourself your ear gets accustomed to hearing only your instrument. When you put yourself in a live gig with the band, it's hearing that "pristine" sound differently against competing instruments and vocals and audience.

Ken