well i bought the X8 today and I am not impressed

If it sounds great thru high quality headphones and sounds crappy thru studio monitors than something in the equalizing is wrong.

"thru the headphones the XR sounds nice...thru the behringer UB1832 FXPro mixer and thru the KRK's it sounds really thin.."

Perhaps tweaking the EQ on the mixer will sort it out. You said yourself it sounds good on headphones, but not thru the mixer and KRK's... that should tell you something about the mixer and/or speakers is not set-up in a way to reproduce the quality you're hearing on headphones. Try boosting the low and high mid (more low mid) a touch to beef up the mid-range a bit, shame the 1832 doesn't have a parametric mid like some of the other Behringers. Set some time aside to tweak the mixer settings so that you get the sound nearer to what you want to hear.

Are you using the graphic EQ in the UB1832, if so, have you tried the sound with the EQ set flat, or better still with the graphic EQ bypassed?

Are the KRK's active? If not, what amp are you using, does it have tone controls and what sort of input are you using on the amp?

Have you checked your cables? Is one wired up the wrong way round? Out-of-phase stereo signals can lead to a "weak" sound.

Dave

"Some musicians have a physical block, some have a mental block, while others have a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

the other sounds are good...the piano sound of my yamaha p200 is killer thru the system but the X8 sounds really horrible..i just dont get it..the acoustic nyl;on guitar is good the drums sound fine but the pianos and organs are just awful..so hy does the yamaha sound good and the triton thur the same system?

Hi samrisio.

In response to your question about the middle keys being too flat, I'm afraid I'm not hearing the deficiency you are. I don't really have a studio (or home studio), just the Fantom-X8, a pair of Sony MDR-V900 headphones, a pair of Behringer Truth B2031A monitors and some balanced cables going from the Fantom-X8 MIX outputs to the monitors' inputs. I don't yet use a mixer. I don't use any software sequencer (yet). So the signal from my Fantom-X8 is fairly unobstructed by potential equalizing factors. The mixer, equalizer, or other component is to blame if everything sounds okay through headphones. Make SURE you are using balanced cables from the MIX outputs on the Fantom-X and that your mixer supports balanced inputs. If you aren't your audio will sound very weak.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

OK, so your system is probably OK for EQ etc... Are you definitely working from Factory default settings for the "problem" patches? I mean, they couldn't have been altered from the original settings before you began playing them?

The reason the p200 piano sounds better than the Fantom, to your ears, could even be that the actual samples in the p200 used for the piano sounds were recorded with EQ that just happens to suit your monitoring system better than the EQ settings Roland used when sampling theirs. No matter how much work Roland or Yamaha or Korg or whoever put into the sound quality of the samples and the audio circuitry, the ultimate result will always depend upon the equipment being used to play back the sound. Your particular setup maybe just "colours" the sound in a way that "flatters" the Yamaha piano sound but not the Roland. This is not to say that your system is bad, simply that each system (and even more so the room it is used in) "colours" the sound in a unique way, and will even colour different sounds in varying degrees.

As a test, what does the p200 sound like on the same headphones you used when you found the Fantom to sound good? Does there seem to be a boost in the mid-range? It might be possible that your headphones boost the mid-range slightly and hence making the FX piano sound better from your point of view, where as your monitoring system does not boost the mid-range.

Other than that, it may well just be that the Fantom piano and organ patches are just not too your taste and you may well have to edit some of the EQ settings in each patch and so on to tweak them to your liking.

For me, the pianos and organs are the highlight of the Fantom sounds... but that is probably just because they suit my taste and playing style (the "lead boxing glove" method of keyboard performance ;o)

Dave.

"Some musicians have a physical block, some have a mental block, while others have a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

Nathan,
unbalanced cables shouldn't weaken the sound, but will be more prone to interference leading to "induced" hiss and hum.

I use balanced cables live, but at the moment I'm using unbalanced in the studio (only because I haven't yet got round to making more balanced cables!). In the studio I am using a Yamaha 01v mixer feeding to a Denon PMA-350SE amp which drives a pair of Spirit Absolute 2 nearfields. I have to say that I too can't hear any flat or thin area in the middle ranges of the piano sounds, either in my studio or on my live rig PA system. Trouble is, because of the wildly varying peices of equipment the synths run through, you can never guarantee the quality or "colour" of the sound that will come out of the speakers.

Dave.

"Some musicians have a physical block, some have a mental block, while others have a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

that different with the instruments..no way!..i play 4 differnet things thru the set up i have..KRK...boehringer mixer etc and everything sounds good except the awful horrible fantom keys

nsheldon wrote:

"Make SURE you are using balanced cables from the MIX outputs on the Fantom-X and that your mixer supports balanced inputs. If you aren't your audio will sound very weak."


Good suggestion! May I also suggest for samrisio to make sure the LEFT cable is plugged into the LEFT input/output jacks, and the RIGHT cable is plugged into the RIGHT input/output jacks. Having them crossed makes stereo spead samples like the piano sound weak in the middle section.,

Heheh.

Well then I'm sorry, mate, I don't know what to suggest other than you should have a go at tweaking those patches. I mean, if it sounds good on headphones, but awful through your system I don't see how the keboard can be at fault unless the output stage is faulty in some way. If you suspect it is thenI suggest you take it back to the dealer and ask them to set it up so that you can demonstrate the bad quality of the sound... you should be entitled to swap it within a certain time period since buying the synth, otherwise you are entitled to repair under warranty. If you really can't bare the piano sounds then stick to your p200. You certainly seem to have enough keyboards to pick the best sounds from each in order to cover each instrument type. I'm afraid no single keyboard is ever going to suit your own personal taste in every department.

Oh and beleive me, one instrument can sound very different to the rest when played thru the same system. For starters, you only need to have a slight impedance mis-match between the instrument and the supported impedance range of the mixer to affect the sound, and that's before you get into the realms of the inherent EQ and compression.

Dave.

"Some musicians have a physical block, some have a mental block, while others have a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

Suges,

I think you mean if one channel is out of phase (i.e. signal connected to ground, and ground connected to signal), then the out-of-pahes sound in one channel will cancel out matching frequencies in the other, and those frequencies will tend to be those panned near the middle of the sereo image... i.e. the middle keys in a piano sound with keymapped pan positions, as you quite rightly point out. Swapping correctly wired cables around will only reverse the stereo image.

Dave.

"Some musicians have a physical block, some have a mental block, while others have a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

drums and other patches sound good thru the headphones and the stereo system monitors and the piano sounds weak?

Drums are a very different sound to pianos, and a single drum sound is very unlikely to be in stereo.

Have you checked your cables as suggested? Or are you using the exact same cables when using your other keyboards? If one cable is out of phase it will make TRUE stereo samples sound weak for any sounds appearing near the centre of the stereo image. Please answer this, because unless you give us some feedback to the suggestions we are offering it is difficult for us to help you get to the bottom of the problem. I'm not looking for an argument or a debate on wether or not the Fantom piano is good or crap... I'm just trying to help you eliminate any setup problems that could be spoiling your enjoyment of your new instrument.

"Some musicians have a physical block, some have a mental block, while others have a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

Let me explain the out-of-phase thing. If you pace a mono sample in the middle of a stereo imageand then play it back with one channel out of phase, then (theoretically) the sound will disappear as the left channel is the exact inverse of the right channel, hence cancelling the sound out. Now with a stereo piano sound, typically the high notes are panned to the right, the low notes to the left, leaving the middle notes near the centre of the stereo image. If one of your cables is out of phase, then only the middle notes of a typical stereo piano patch will be affected by the "cancellation" effect, generally being perceived as a weak sound in the middle registers. As this is a problem with a cable, it would not apply to listenung on headphones.

I hope that makes it clearer.

Dave.

"Some musicians have a physical block, some have a mental block, while others have a wooden block". Unfortunately, I'm in the 1st category!

Hi Dave.

Excellent points. Yes, the out of phase phenomenon is something that could certainly explain the problem as sam has been describing it (I've personally experimented with phase/out of phase stuff and can attest to the center channel elimination of sound). In fact, if you use the synth to play a sine wave on one Tone and an inverse sine wave on another Tone, you'll hear nothing when you play a key (just as a demonstration).

Anyway, with regard to your response to my balanced/unbalanced suggestion, there is actually a significant technical difference between a balanced and unbalanced signal (in terms of electrical design and thus in how the two are handled by sound equipment). An excellent explanation of the differences can be found here.

http://home.btconnect.com/woodgreen/tech_tips/techtip/art6.htm

but as a summery, unbalanced (2 wires) relies on a zero voltage fixed reference point, thus you have ground and "hot" wires. A balanced signal has 3 wires, ground, "live" and "return." The "live" wire sends the in-phase audio signal, the "return" wire sends the 180 degree out-of-phase audio signal and the difference between the two is taken as the reference voltage while ground is used for grounding between the two devices. Now, if you have a Tip-Ring-Sleeve jack in your Fantom-X (which you do) with an in-phase signal sent on Tip and 180 degree out-of-phase signal sent on Ring (and Sleeve acting as ground), then you use a Tip-Sleeve cable to plug into that jack, what happens to the Ring connector? It touches the Sleeve on the cable plug, the ground contact in the jack is also touching the Sleeve on that plug. (Note your earlier discussion about phase differences and how they cancel each other out). If the output device (the Fantom-X) is using an electronic balancing method (via integrated circuits), which I believe it is (as opposed to transformer isolated balancing), the "return" signal becomes grounded (somewhat muting it) and the output level will be cut by 6 dB when using a TS cable or an input with only a TS jack. This is a 2 times level cut! I've experienced this problem myself before and had to switch to balanced cables because of it.

Regards,

Nathan Sheldon
http://www.nathansheldon.com/

i will get new cables tomorrow but i have not changed anything..i listen to the roland Xv2020 module and i cant stand the piano sound..same with the XR..thru the same headphones and sane cables and same mixer and KRK monitors everything sounds great except the roland pianos..why why why? things are not GREAT in the headphones but passable..thru the speakers it is a very muted nasally sound..especially compared to everything else i own...looks like a return tomorrow and i cannot understand how you guys can love this sound?