Hey, is anybody gigging, in medium spaces in stereo? The motif is so great in stereo, I hate not taking advantage of it, but it never sounds right coming from FOH. Any tips on getting the best sound live?

Nevermind, I read all of the previous posts on this. But maybe you guys can shed some light. I heard a big band gig recently that had a Fender Rhodes on it, using tremelo. It seemed to fill up the room no matter where we were sitting, no phase issues. Im just looking to recreate this for the audience of a slightly bigger space. The PA speakers are too far apart. Could I hook up two speakers near the keys and reproduce the effect for the audience? How should they be placed?

Finally found time to respond to this.
I have been gigging in stereo for nearly 10 years now.  I dispensed with all the “OMG you’ll get PHASING” tripe.  Yeah...you might get phasing in certain instances, but for most of the venues *I* play at, we’re either in a small to medium room, or we’re in an outdoor space that doesn’t have a huge depth to it. 

Therefore, I actually not only record every instrument and microphone to a Zoom R16, but I pan things such that what we hear in our ears is (or should be!) EXACTLY what FOH is getting and the panning of microphone/instrument (for example, my microphone and my keyboards) matches what the audience both “sees” and “hears”.

This not only gives us some space in our in-ear mix (and thus I can “hone in” on my vocals or my keyboards, or even the guitarist’s guitar), but it quite literally visually matches what the audience is seeing to what they’re hearing.

Typically, if you are in the audience looking at us, you’ll see the following:
Guitarist on the left
Female vocalist in the middle
Keyboardist (me) on the right

Therefore, in our in-ear mix as well as our FOH mix we have:

Guitar - mono - panned left 40
Guitarist vocal - mono - panned left 40
Female vocal - mono - panned center
Keyboard vocal - mono - panned right 40
Keyboards - stereo - panned right 60 (to offset the “stereo-ness” of it)
Drums/Bass - stereo - centered (although the various parts of the drum “kit” are of course spread around the stereo spectrum).

We’ve been doing it this way for the band Baja Dunes for going on 2 years now and we actually get comments from average folks (who know nothing about sound) as to “how great it sounds out here...everything is clear and clean and in its place”.

We have been using JBL Eon 15” powered speakers for main FOH, but we’ve been flirting for 5-6 gigs now with using Yamaha HS80M studio monitors for the smaller rooms and the clarity has INCREASED with the use of the HS80M’s, although in my opinion, the experiment is over, the HS80M’s “win” for small/medium rooms, BUT, I’m sick of dragging them out of my studio every time we gig.  So it’s back to the JBL’s for now.

Maybe Yamaha powered mains or QSC’s in our future...don’t know.

Anyway...I cannot and will not go back to mono for EITHER the FOH mix or the in-ear mix.

If we didn’t use in-ears, I would STILL have some aspect of stereo speakers on stage for my monitoring (I have some Behringer keyboard amps that would work nicely for that).

You simply lose TOO much in terms of all the effects that Rhodes/Wurly, B3, and Analog synths can make use of (not to mention simple acoustic piano sounds much more spacious and real when stereo vs. mono).

So there’s my opinion!

Sincerely,

Kevin B. Selby
http://kevinselby.com <-- Peaceful Music
http://facebook.com/BajaDunes <-- Live Performance

Thanks Kevin, very informative post.  I recently started gigging again after years away - I last played with mono analogue synths, a Hammond with top bottom miked leslie, etc - Flintstones old school and stereo was not an issue. Now getting back into it with the Motif XS I was anticipating an amazing FOH sound. Unfortunately I have been disappointed not only in the quality of the mono sound from the FOH but also in the reluctance of anyone to try stereo - “phasing tripe”, LOL. The sound I hear when I practice in stereo with a couple of inexpensive Behringer B205D monitors is like night and day.

After reading your post I agree that mono simply is not good enough with a Motif.  I have a DI box with left and right input/outputs so next time out I want to try sending both signals to separate channels on the board.  I assume you would pan one hard left and the other hard right, please let me know if you have any tips on setting this up.  Thx and we’ll see how it goes!

You may also like to see the following thread:

http://www.motifator.com/index.php/forum/viewthread/449514/

And just so we’re clear.  I have been performing for the last 10 years with duos, trios, and 4-piece bands in small (30’ x 30’ rooms) to medium (100’ x 100’ outdoor spaces) venues and have not wavered one bit from my commitment to a stereo FOH and stereo in-ear monitoring.

I WILL say that on very very rare occasions, in the larger spaces ESPECIALLY out doors, if it’s windy, I have heard some weird phasing that was freaky, but it’s pretty rare and I just don’t really care about it.  I’m guessing it was more the wind than it was the stereo FOH.  I suppose an audio engineer purist might switch everything to mono for a gig such as that...but even mono is going to phase when air currents are pushing things around.

My absolutely hands down favorite room to play is Bookwalter Winery, inside their 30’ x 30’ room with my Yamaha HS80M studio monitors as our FOH mains.  I capture all channels in multi-track on the Zoom R16 *AND* I capture a stereo recording of the room with a Zoom Q3HD sitting at the back of the room pointing at the band.  I then blend the R16 multi-track source with the Q3HD source to get a “matrix” mix and I can adjust how much of the “room” (i.e., the Q3HD) I want in the mix.  Fabulous recordings and great sounding results!

So yeah...I’m a stereo freak.  Now interestingly enough...at church, they don’t run FOH in stereo.  In those cases, I simply use the L/Mono output through a Direct box and to the main PA.  To my ears it still sounds great, and I think it has to do with the coherency Bad Mister speaks of where the XF does the phase summing for you and pipes it in mono out the L/Mono port.  I haven’t exhaustively tested this, but at church when I have the B3 screaming with full on Leslie it STILL sounds absolutely fantastic.  Going out mono does NOT appear to affect what are arguably STEREO sound effects.  You would think that summing stereo down to L/Mono would make a stereo leslie effect sound more like bad tremolo, but somehow it doesn’t.  It sounds RIPPIN’!!  And my bandmates turn their heads and smile.  That said, I have requested (and the main worship leader agrees) that we need to get our church FOH switched to stereo some day soon.

Sincerely,

Kevin B. Seby
http://kevinselby.com <-- Peaceful Music

Thanks guys for all this! Im still pretty frustrated with all this as our space is 80’ wide by 25’ dee; very wide, so running stereo with speakers 20 feet apart doesn’t sound good at all.  Even in terms of speakers, ever reputable sound tech has told me its foolish to use a studio monitor live. But havent found a PA speaker that sounds better. I dont know…

Studio Monitors are in a class of speakers known as “near field” - and that explains why they are not for playing to an audience. They are optimized for the “sweet spot” which at maximum is measured in single digit feet. Monitors like the HS80MS are to be used in a 3 or 4 foot equilateral triangle with the engineer’s spot. They are personal speakers, not loud speakers.

Today you can find very high fidelity “loudspeakers” (that is the class of speakers you want for an audience of people). You do get what you pay for in this category, but the sound you can get will knock your socks off. You can get mind boggling SPL out of these cabinets, yet they can still sound high fidelity - not harsh, not blary - if you get a chance listen to your synth through a pair of DXR or better than them the DSR-series.

Seriously, they are worth a listen:
The DXRs come in 8’s, 10’s 12’s and 15-inch cabinets

Yamaha DXR-series Powered Speakers

If the eight-inch don’t blow you away, I’ll eat my hat!!! But get the size that suits your venues… there is a matching 12 and 15 sub (DXS-12 and DXS-15 respectively)

I have an additional question regarding mono FOH and getting the best keyboard sound.  Has anyone tried miking a pair of stage monitors (stereo) and sending these to the the FOH board?  Probably some good reasons not to do this (e.g. stage mix, quality, etc.) but it crossed my mind that it might be worth a try.

Eliminate microphones on stage whenever possible. If you have a pair of powered monitors you can send a (non-powered) LINE OUT from your cabinets to the HOUSE mixer. Clean, and no leakage from other devices on stage.