Hi Don,

One suggestion that was made on the Bose forum is to use a small keyboard amp sitting beside you for the right channel along with the PAS. Click HERE to go to that thread.

One thing that could be a potential downside of this idea is if you do have some heavy stereo imaging going on in a patch, i.e. stereo echo, rotary speaker sim., etc. the audience is only going to hear half of the effect at half the rate if you know what I mean.

All in all as you said, the only person who really benefits from stereo on a gig is the person playing the keyboard.

Best Regards,

Dave


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Wm. David McMahan
Nat'l Product and Support Manager
Generalmusic USA
GEM Community Forums

Mono. Do you really want the drums, bass, lead, and whatnot to sound like they are in the same position, or do you want them to sound like they are spread out, like in a real band?

First of all the most important person is the player[Stereo is so nice, one of us should enjoy it].

There are places I play[with the band],that stereo will not work as well..primarily because we have to fill the large room up with coverage.

Most of the time Stereo works fine, especially on the dance floor[the second most important people]..as Clif mentioned, there is no substitute for spreading the "Band" instruments..
Usually I place the speakers[on poles] about 15-20 feet apart in stereo, even with 200 people[dancers] on the floor in front of the band..
The lone situation that comes to mind, We play a club that is wide[all dance floor], and I have to angle the speakers outward slightly for even coverage[mono is the only way to work this room..].

With the PAS, the sound is spread through the entire room--just like a real band. When you're using the Bose those sound do not seem to be coming from a single speaker, or pair of speakers. You must try the system in order to believe the difference you'll hear between the PAS and conventional PA systems.

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy

Fran, there may be a better way for large venues. Actually, Bose recommends that each member of a band have a PAS behind him so that audience members can localize the sounds and experience some spread. I have attended a rock concern where this approach was used with PASs, and it works. This suggests that using multi-mono instead of stereo might provide spread even for large venues. For an arranger player, this might mean panning all instruments far right or far left. (If the keyboard has additional outputs, each can drive a different speaker in mono. Expensive, but should work.) As long as there is no common signal between speakers, there should be no phase cancellation. Also, it might be satisfactory to use weak (e.g., internal) stereo speakers with a PAS so that at least some people get a stereo effect.

Basically, if you are an arranger player contemplating the purchase of a PAS for mono use, just realize there is a significant compromise in spatiality involved.

Thanks for the info Dave. I don't mind it enough to tote another amp around. In fact, it's probably just different, not bad.
Don

With all due respect, the biggest issue with stereo vs. mono is not being discussed at all here: phase cancellation. In several forums I have been reading about people trying to figure out why their keyboards sound so good in headphones but then they sound thin and terrible when amplified. It turns out that when summed to mono some keyboards literally phase themselves to death.

This is no longer a matter of theory to me: one place I play has a stereo house PA and recently when I set up there I failed to notice that someone had switched it so that it was set for mono - immediately I thought my Yamaha 9000 Pro keyboard had a hardware failure... the piano sound was thin and missing a lot of midrange with some notes almost dropping out altogether. No amount of EQ could solve the problem. Once I discovered the switch my normal keyboard sound returned instantly.

This probably isn't an issue for people with mono instruments in the first place, like the singing guitarists I see using the Bose PAS in many venues here... in fact, I think the Bose system is ideal for them. But for stereo keyboards it isn't just a matter of whether half of the Leslie effect is missing or whether the audience is hearing you in stereo but whether your sound is cancelling itself out. It's a more serious issue than you might think.

The fact that an audience can't hear stereo samples is hoowey. I can hear it behind me, my band mates can hear it on the right of me, the crowd all over the room can hear my leslie effects. We are talking about a room full of 200 people, not a stadium gig. In small rooms the left and right channels bounce all over the place off the ceiling, walls, back wall, left wall, right wall. Anyone in the room will hear stereo.

I just don't buy this argument that stereo is useless live!!!! I'm living proof that it does make a HUGE difference.

Al

In small rooms the left and right channels bounce all over the place off the ceiling, walls, back wall, left wall, right wall. Anyone in the room will hear stereo.

Think about this. If the sound is bouncing off the walls, ceiling, floor, then it is all combined into a single sound--MONO! The sounds are traveling at 5,280 feet per second. If those speakers are facing forward, which is the usual position, draw an equalateral triangle from the speakers and that is the area in front of the speakers that hears stereo. If you are to the left or right of a stereo speaker system, you cannot hear balanced stereophonic sounds. The band members are standing between the speakers, therefore they can hear stereo sounds, especially if the speakers are positioned a short distance to the rear of the performers. However, the only person that will hear a perfectly balanced stereophonic sound is the person standing directly in middle of the triangle. The best advice I have for anyone that has any doubts about the Bose PAS system is to take advantage of the 45-day Bose PAS trial, set it up, try it out, and be objective. Let your ears, and the ears of your audiences be the judge. If you don't like what you hear, send it back to Bose--they'll even pay the freight both ways--no questions asked.

Esh was talking about phase cancelation, which can be a problem with a few, stereo sampled voices. Putting a bit of common sense logic to this, wouldn't phase cancellation be a problem with any amp that combines the keyboard's stereo output channels? Hmmmmmm! This means that most of the mono PA systems would reproduce the problem if the keyboard's output were routed into two inputs of a mono PA system. Something to think about.....

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy