Need Help in Connecting Keyboard to Mixer

[samimpl]

Hi,

I am noob to sound system. We were trying to connect our keyboard (Kurzweil PC88) to our PA system, but I am having a difficult time doing so.

We currently bought Mackie 1402 vlz. We are using snake to hook up everything from stage. Everything else is working great, but the keyboard sound is terrible. We currently have 1/4 intrument cable connected to headphone, to monitor jack on snake, and from the monitor jack plugged in to 1/4 line-in in one of the channels of the mixer. Sound is horrible.

I asked some in Guitar Center, and they said I should plug 1/4 instrumental cable to left(mono) to directbox to Mic XLR cable to one of the mic plug in the snake to mixer mic input. Is that correct setup?

But, no sound comes out at all if I do that... Maybe there is something wrong will the keyboard? What is the best way to do this? Thanks~

[sabianq]

Hi there, welcome to audioforums.

From your description, it sounds like a line/mic issue.

I know that the head phone jack carries the same signal as the other two outputs, but it is not the best practice to connect through the headphone jack.
you should be using the Left (mono) and Right out to connect to the mixer.

if you are wanting to use only one channel, use the left output, if you want to run stereo, use two channels and connect the right and left to two channels respectively.
connect them to the line in jacks on the mixer, and keep your gain DOWN.

set up your gain structure, keeping at least 10 db headroom through out the chain.

[sabianq]

BTW, here is the manual for your keyboard.


http://www.kurzweilmusicsystems.com/support.html?Id=1635

[samimpl]

Thanks. It seem like the left(mono) port is broken, but I got the right port to work with it? Would left(mono) sound better if I am only going to use one port? I don't know if it is worth fixing since we will only use it with one channel. Well, thanks for all the help. We needed the manual too. Thanks~

[GZsound]

Thanks. It seem like the left(mono) port is broken, but I got the right port to work with it? Would left(mono) sound better if I am only going to use one port? I don't know if it is worth fixing since we will only use it with one channel. Well, thanks for all the help. We needed the manual too. Thanks~


You can typically look at your patches and see how they are panned in the keyboard itself.

If your left mono jack output is not working, just go into each patch you use and pan everything to the right and use the right output jack. You may not need to do this is the patches are allready set up and panned both left and right.

But when using a snake to the mixer, the best way is to take a quarter inch instrument cable from your keyboard right channel output to a DI and then run a balanced XLR cable to a mic input on the snake, which plugs into a mic input on the mixer. That keeps signal degradation to a minimum over long distances.

I would NEVER use headphone outputs to send a signal anywhere except to a pair of headphones. It is a "driven" signal and will sound terrible.