I did a gig last night, a very small one - ~20-22 people or so, in a room not much bigger than my living room. I'd say the room was ~20' x 30' or so. Low ceiling.

I thought I could get by with just 1 Bose S1, which I set up using the "L+R" output (mono) as Yamaha suggests. The one S1 did fine as far as volume, amount of bass, clarity overall, etc., for this room. However, many sounds seemed "flat" (not musically flat, but tonally flat) ... things like the piano (C7 and CTX), the strings, vibes, etc. Sometimes my Left sound, which I had set at a decent volume for playing countermelodies etc., didn't seem to "cut through" as I'm used to. The pianos in particular just didn't sound that great to me. Organs with "Leslie" sounded "OK" but not as I'm used to.

I'm going to play the exact same place next week; will try it with two S1's evenly spread out in the room. Maybe the audience won't notice it much - but it'll be interesting if it's a big difference, or a small difference, for me as the player.

I didn't "feel" as good about the sound, and it sort of was less "inspiring" than I'm used to (I usually go Stereo, either with 2 Bose S1s, or my Lucas Nano 600 in stereo setup, two FBT Maxx40a's) ... so even if it's mostly for me, if I do indeed hear a noticeable difference, I'll probably stick with Stereo even for smaller gigs. It's only an extra minute or two to set up a 2nd speaker ...

Thoughts?
Jim

It's what you get used to lugging around and setting up. Some think I'm crazy for setting up (2) 8.2 speakers, but it only takes 10 minutes (if in a hurry) to set up my whole rig.

I really like the dual pole mount that houses both speakers and then the air assisted pole can be adjusted to any height. I put them directly behind and above my head - works like a charm in any situation and all my sounds that I hear through headphones sound the same live.

I only played for 10 people yesterday in a very tiny room. It looks so overkill when setting up, but the headroom I have and the low volumes are perfect in these scenarios too. I also have the power to do almost any place now.

The pianos, especially, sound terrific in stereo and like a toy in mono. Never will do one speaker - just me!

Even if not needed I use both my Eon Ones. Did an outdoor Happy Hour which had to be laidback and low-key but it only took me a few extra minutes to set up the second Eon. The full soound surrounding me made me happy and I guess it ounded good to the people too. I got a number of compliments and no requests to turn down.
As i said before stereo give your sound more "depth and body" JMHO

DITTO!

Donny, when did you get an eon 1?

2 days ago..

Yamaha has always had issues summing to mono. Unless you tweak the sound, it'll always come up short. They use stereo samples that don't play well in mono right out of the gate, but with some TLC, you can add the life back in. I did it when I was in YammaLand.

Hi - how did you add life back into Yamaha's mono out? I'll likely stick with 2 speakers for even small gigs - as it's not much more time and at least for me, I get more enjoyment (and maybe play a little better) when I like the sound I'm hearing . . . but curious how one might breathe more life (or remove mono-ness) from Yamaha's mono-summed outputs ...

jim

Jim,
It's been so long, and there was no formula, but I just fooled with the piano sound until it began to "sing" in the Bose Compact. Adjusted filters, ADSRs, etc. just use your ears, and not your eyes. Pretend you're Ray Charles mixing a recording.

Jim, many years ago I posted a Yamaha Piano voice that I created using the PSR-3000. It took me about a week to get what I wanted to hear, but nevertheless, it really worked well and has been downloaded thousands of times. If I recall, I used one of the Gm Piano voices, then went to work using the effects.

I'll be more than happy to post the link if anyone wishes to download it.

Gary