I am very happy with my MOXF. I love the piano sounds I get whether it be stock, the S700, S6, or the AS Kawai in my studio/headphones.

But - in live use (even w/ my stereo cabs onstage for personal monitoring) I’ve yet to get these great stereo sounds better than tolerable. I’ve tried different speaker brands (Yamaha, Mackie, Behringer, RCF).

Mono is much worse sounding. I’ve gone so far as to unplug everything except for the left/mono cable out of the MOXF to the DI and I’m so disappointed at the way these pianos come across FOH. I’ve tried stock voices, other users voices, and my own to no avail. The rest of the sounds work well IMO - just piano at issue.

Is anyone out there playing live with bigger PA systems having this feeling about your piano sounds? Looking for any advise to help with this. Thanks very much, Shep

This is a ongoing discussion.  You might start with this Recent Thread.

Actually, I see you are a part of that thread!

There havn’t been any here raving about their piano sound live. I’d think that would be a major point in a new keyboard if you work professionally. Especially through the FOH. I can accept less in front of me as long as the sound guy says - wow, killer piano!

jshep0102 - 06 January 2014 03:31 PM

There haven’t been any here raving about their piano sound live. I’d think that would be a major point in a new keyboard if you work professionally. Especially through the FOH. I can accept less in front of me as long as the sound guy says - wow, killer piano!

I understand that, but the sound-reinforcement of a piano is difficult to do well across the board.  This is not a MOXF issue, it is a piano issue.  Piano sounds are difficult to amplify in a live setting.  This fact is verified by the headphone tests:  Headphones aren’t susceptible to the PA issues.

Having said that, there are certainly ways to improve live-room piano sounds, and hopefully you’ll get some of that discussion here!

I concur about it being a piano issue, sir. i appreciate your willingness to take on/talk through a tough problem. Being an ‘elder statesman’ (in my 50’s) I’ve heard plenty of pianos in live use that were outstanding - noteably Yamaha stage pianos. Not run stereo at any point in the chain. 3 guys I can think of are no longer out gigging, and I don’t know how to reach them for info. I know David Bryan still uses an old Clavinova P-500, but have know clue what he does to make it sound great out front. There’s got to be a way - this sounds too good before it hits the speakers not to please.

I am also anxious to see some more discussion on this topic, as live sound reinforced piano is a subject near and dear to me also!  I am constantly working to improve both my monitor and FOH piano sound!

If anyone is really happy with their live piano sound out of a mono or stereo cabinet setup, I’d love to hear a mic’d up recording with nothing applied to it! Or if you have a live FOH board mix that shows your piano sound, I’d love to hear it and hear how you achieved it - thanks!

Edit - B_M perhaps?

jshep0102 - 07 January 2014 07:34 AM

If anyone is really happy with their live piano sound out of a mono or stereo cabinet setup, I’d love to hear a mic’d up recording with nothing applied to it! Or if you have a live FOH board mix that shows your piano sound, I’d love to hear it and hear how you achieved it - thanks!

Edit - B_M perhaps?

You say you’ve tried different brands of powered monitors. But what about
the mixer you are plugging your MO XF into? Or are you using a mixer?

There’s a very important distinction to be made about live sound. Live sound is sound reinforcement. Stage monitors and FOH systems
will never exhibit the same qualities that your studio monitors exhibit.
Live sound is a completely different animal. For one thing, there’s a
lot “more” of frequencies which can be perceived as troublesome. That
deep low synth pad that sounds great in your studio will be overwhelmingly
low-end heavy through a large P.A. Those crisp highs in your brass voice
will become shrill and piercing in a live setting. A nice present midrange
can become a glaring bark in a live system.

Furthermore, you are dealing with what are usually very poor acoustics in
a live setting, be it rehearsal or a show. Most large venues have horrid
acoustics. With the addition of the band, with everyone competing to be
heard, throws an additional set of problems into the “mix”.

I’ve done keyboard tech work for major tours since 2011...Michael Jackson, Sergio Mendes, David Foster, the Cure, and others. Yamaha Motifs were used on every one of these tours. The “stock” pianos always sounded great. One of the factors involved is that the keyboards all go through very expensive high-end mixing desks, either first into the monitor board and then split to the FOH desk, or the other way around. You’re talking Yamaha or Digico desks that run into over a hundred thousand dollars. For Michael Jackson, we used Yamaha 01V96 submixers for each keyboard rig, those were what the audience would actually hear.
The point is, what you’ve plugged your MO XF into first is very very
important.

Regarding a recording of a mic’d live cabinet - man, I can’t think of
a worse “representation” of live sound. That would just be bad. Live
recordings are always taken direct off the desk. No one puts microphones on the P.A. cabinets.

Personally, live I run my Motif XF (and other keyboards, plus the audio from my laptop) first into an Alesis 12R rackmount mixer and send the
stereo out from the mixer to the house, and a separate mono send to my
Yamaha MS400 stage monitor which sits on top of my rack, pointed at me.
It’s a really good sound..not anything like what I get in my studio, it’s a “live” sound and I account for the difference that makes and “adjust” my expectations.

Thanks much for the reply, Dave. I went to your site and looked into your prowess early on. You taking time for us here is a blessing.

I don’t mean the FOH cabs recorded - just a ‘what does your sound from where it comes from ina live setting sound like?’ clip. If you follow…

I’ve tried with and w/o a mixer, no real change in quality tha’s worthy of the time to set it up live.

So it seems that a separate mixer (I guess it’s for eqing the speaker sound and maybe level adjustment) is needed to improve the results. When you ‘adjust’ your expectation, are you liking what you hear or not? I hear samples that sound small, lacking their fullness, and sadly, unfullfilling.

Do you run fx loops to outboard gear in your mixer? If so, what? What in particular seems to bring your live piano sound to a satisfactory level? Seeing as how far up the food chain you are, I’m guessing that level is higher than mine!

The stereo out to a mono (stereo FOH?!?) FOH is curious to me, unless that’s to send for recording. That understanding coming from B_M’s word on not summing the outs of the keyboard, which I’ve known for years.

Thanks again for your time, Shep

To add, I’ve also used all 8 elements in an effort to eq ranges of the piano more accurately for the speaker. The sound is simply uninspiring, unlike most all of my other sounds are. For all I’ve done right with this board, i feel like I’m failing with pianos, which I use plenty of.

jshep0102 - 07 January 2014 09:33 AM

Thanks much for the reply, Dave. I went to your site and looked into your prowess early on. You taking time for us here is a blessing.

I don’t mean the FOH cabs recorded - just a ‘what does your sound from where it comes from ina live setting sound like?’ clip. If you follow…

I’ve tried with and w/o a mixer, no real change in quality tha’s worthy of the time to set it up live.

So it seems that a separate mixer (I guess it’s for eqing the speaker sound and maybe level adjustment) is needed to improve the results. When you ‘adjust’ your expectation, are you liking what you hear or not? I hear samples that sound small, lacking their fullness, and sadly, unfullfilling.

Do you run fx loops to outboard gear in your mixer? If so, what? What in particular seems to bring your live piano sound to a satisfactory level? Seeing as how far up the food chain you are, I’m guessing that level is higher than mine!

The stereo out to a mono (stereo FOH?!?) FOH is curious to me, unless that’s to send for recording. That understanding coming from B_M’s word on not summing the outs of the keyboard, which I’ve known for years.

Thanks again for your time, Shep

Well, asking “what does it sound like from where it comes from in a live setting sound like?” is entirely subjective. It would be different for every place you play, with whom you’re playing, and what position relative to your monitor you are.Are you two feet away? Is it at your
ear level? Is it on the floor? Is it angled up at you? Those are all variables. There is no “one size fits all” answer to that question, other than “it depends”.

Look, I’ll be honest. Live sound is always worse than in a studio. You
have to take that into account first. You just won’t have it as good as you like onstage. Get used to that.

On major tours we refer to onstage monitors as “wedges”. It’s always loud, blaring, and generally not great. Most touring bands use in-ear monitors these days - that “seals off” the live onstage sound and you get a much better sound, although it also gives you a sense that you are “detached” from the rest of the band, in your own world of sound with your own custom mix.

Do you use earplugs? You should. If you don’t, you risk two things -
your eardrums will tighten up and become less responsive (and therefore
less able to perceive detail) as the band gets louder and louder and
you compensate for that by turning up your monitor. Second, you simply
lose your hearing after awhile. Me, I wear earplugs all the time in rehearsal or live. Yes, it"muffles" the sound. But your
brain “learns” to adjust for the “muffle” and after a short time you
will be able to perceive a balance between lows and highs. My point here is that if you wear ear protection (which you should) then you
will not hear things “clearly”..but what is more important, hearing
clearly ontage or keeping your hearing intact?

I don’t run any effects loops. Yes, you should use a mixer, the best
quality you can purchase. You need to submix your signals so you can
split them out and bus them to multiple destinations - the FOH, you,
maybe other band members. My onstage monitor is fed via a mono aux send on my own mixer, connected to the input on my stage monitor. I don’t equalize anything via the mixer. My yamaha monitor has low and hi EQ knobs, if I need to I’ll equalize there, usually it’s rolling off the highs. Most of the time I don’t even equalize the monitor.

I’m taking stereo outputs out of the keyboards and I send a stereo
signal to the house via a stereo D.I. All mixers have at least two channels for the keys. Most P.A.’s are run in stereo these days. If they’re not, it doesn’t matter, the sound man can still deal with a stereo signal from you, that is what you should send him/her.

Bottom line - forget about “an exceptional live sound experience”. It isn’t usually going to happen (when it does, count yourself as having witnessed a miracle).  Learn to appreciate the difference in a live
setting and adjust for that. It has nothing to do with the MO XF itself.

Thanks again, Dave. The generality of whether a piano sound is in the ballpark of ‘I can work with that’ compared to the sound I perceive using my guitar/axefx/rcf monitor is usually not destroyed my how loud/how far away, etc the cab is. I don’t think 100-300 seat venues I’m in these days part-time, are that big a difference place to place til you just can’t hear yourself at all. Not you professionally, but a 37 year live performance professional who’s played to as many as 15,000 - I don’t feel like I’m clueless to the world of room sound. Many will gain from your insight regarding this.

I will put my mixer in place again next show, and send stereo feed to the always mono FOH from whomever is paid to run us that night - hopefully they can deal with it properly.

At least someone here with real pro credentials said it - ‘forget an exceptional live sound experience’!

On to the next thing…

jshep0102 - 07 January 2014 07:34 AM

If anyone is really happy with their live piano sound out of a mono or stereo cabinet setup, I’d love to hear a mic’d up recording with nothing applied to it! Or if you have a live FOH board mix that shows your piano sound, I’d love to hear it and hear how you achieved it - thanks!

It may not be the best piano sound ever, but it works for me. This is a MOX8, the only thing I changed from the default piano sound was the EQ. I run it mono. This is not any kind of great recording, this is just from the mic that was built into the video camera. I can’t tell you much about the PA, it was the house system. But it was one of these multi-band shows, where basically you have 15 minutes to set up, you plug everything in and play, and all the sound man does is get a rough balance and make sure nothing feeds back. ;-) What’s nice about this clip is that the piano part is full range… you’ll hear plenty of low notes, mid notes, and high notes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA_P8J5TBjU

Thanks for posting this, Scott - it does kinda resemble what I’ve heard of mine. The body of the original samples loses something that disappoints me, a certain hollowness if you’ve felt like that about before. I know the cam mic isn’t doing this any favors. Nice work on that!!

jshep0102 - 07 January 2014 11:55 AM

Thanks for posting this, Scott - it does kinda resemble what I’ve heard of mine. The body of the original samples loses something that disappoints me, a certain hollowness if you’ve felt like that about before. I know the cam mic isn’t doing this any favors. Nice work on that!!

Well if this is what disappoints you, then I think you will always be
disappointed with any live sound. Even though it’s from a camcorder (not
a great way to record any audio), it sounds fine to me. About what I would
expect, maybe somewhat better than I would expect, actually (great playing,Scott!).

The “hollowness” you describe - that’s typical of live sound reinforcement. Think about it, what are your at home studio monitors?
Likely 6-inch (8 inch at most)woofer/tweeter combinations, with a very short throw that focuses at your listening spot, which hopefully is in a room with good acoustics, no glaring relections and no resonances or flutter echoes.  The recording here is from at least several feet from the stage, off-axis from the front P.A. and the monitors. The monitor wedges are probably 15 inch woofers, with separate high-frequency components. The 15” speakers alone are always going
to exhibit what you call “hollowness”. The “thin” sound you think you’re
hearing is due to the overwhelming low end coming from the bass amp,
the kick drum through the subwoofers, and probably a lot of low and low-mid stage boominess, due to the stage being an elevated platform with air underneath. The impression is a loss of low end simply because you can’t compete with all the rest of the low mud that is being flung around from multiple sources.

Seriously, the complexities and drawbacks of live sound are many, and even
people like me continue to learn more about the drawbacks of playing live.
In fact, I can’t even recall when I’ve ever had a pleasant live sound experience, either as an audience member, or as a performer, or as a keyboard tech. Live sound just plain sucks, almost all of the time. The
tradeoff is the excitement and fun of playing, the interaction with the band, and the connection/interaction with the audience. But an optimum, high-fidelity listening experience? Fah-gedda-aboudit.

I recall plenty of good live sound experiences. Every time I play my guitar rig, it’s good. Even though it’s digital. My tone is envied - honestly. 7 string Epi LP w/ Petrucci pups into an Axe Fx Ultra and an RCF NX12 SMA, mic’d. Sweetness. Never in my vox monitor.

Most of the time I like my keyboard sounds (earlier stated). I run through 12” powered monitors to avoid some of the stated heavy lows. I’m talking about hollow I hear even in my well absorbed studio at talking levels, not having the lows blown out by the back side of the mains. Even in sound check by myself, stage volume only, it’s a poor fidelity for just the piano. Oh well. I keep my keys out of the vox monitors, it’s easier to perceive both. I don’t place them on the same side as my guitar, either. I don’t play very loud or stand far from them.

So where I’m not thrilled about my piano, I can say I’m fairly well adjusted to the drawbacks. There are a couple pretty good techs in my area whom don’t disappoint when I’m out supporting the brethren. I’m happy to say I don’t feel about it as you do, even working with the best of everything. Thank you for your willingness to help us explore the things of music, Dave.