Yay!! oh my Goodness.. Scott... THANK YOU!

If I didn't want to learn, I would *not* have been curious about other people's contemporary church set-ups and/or even asked any questions about my own situation. So.. the comments were/are very helpful and you also happen to seem to understand what's happened on the rabbit trails of this thread as well.

I apologize if I was in any way rude, to anyone. It may not be helpful in the repetition of post comments or the insistance that I *do* it their way, but I did want to hear about the set-up just in case we were ever able to accomplish it later.

Scott-Warning! Inside these subsequent brackets contain a lot of hoopla. smile Warning! We are not intending to do this.. I'm just hypothetically pondering different ways to jimmy-rig a set-up.... and attempting to make sure my MIDI understanding is correct now. I have other music endeavors occuring.. so to truely understand this, is far better than just fixing the issues at the church, but to get it right in my mind would fix both situations.
 {{{{About point "b." : I understand, like yourself, and believe it to be the case that the keyboard would not change the actual sound of the midi signal as it does it's thru either. Here's how my mind was working: The keyboard plays the midi signal the first time --> goes to the cpu --> can get changed by software (ie- asking the computer to change the sound to another instrument) and then --> back to the keyboard midi in ...thru the keyboard --> out the keyboard. Because MIDI is so compressed and fast, this happens almost completely instantaneously. Because, we'd buy a keyboard with actual MIDI ports.. we theoretically run midi lines to the sound board without latency, since we don't have a digital snake of sorts....just analog xlr. Does that make sense? Again.. THAt is crazy hypothetical.. Someone at Sweetwater stated that this works, but truely, it's only based on having a keyboard with a sound engine and a few cords. }}}} As you said.. keeping it simple and not using the keyboard as a thru is the way to go. When you get on a limited budget, you'll run softwares off computers with old ports and ports already being used by other objects as well. This isn't ideal in anyway, but understanding it can get you a long way on a lower budget sometimes. I'm not sure that I may not have to actually use this for something else that I'm doing right now. Ha! and Yikes.

About "C.": I did not consider that headphones might Always be unbalanced, until Mac stated his experience. I was (as you have suggested here) assuming the conductor made the difference, but obviously it's something else that makes the difference, for which I hope to learn more about someday. Thank you for that. smile Since a gentleman in the profession stated otherwise to me or I *thought* he was stating so.... I will go back and clear up my own falacies with him, but with more knowledge. To further,.. my understanding was Also that a balance has to do with the port *and* the connector being both balanced, to keep noise off of a long line, too. We continue to have noise from the keyboard.. which I assume is the pre-amp. The adapters work as a headphone jack-> headphone to RCA adapater cable->converter box that converts RCA to XLR-> xlr to snake. The cables are all brand new as well as the converter box and analog snake.

smile Boy a digital/analog hybrid of a snake would make this all so much better! Thank you for letting me know about that. Wow. Huge difference that that would make, in the short term and long term.

"Keyboard has it's own sound engine on board, that was desired in the first place-->analog audio 'snake'-->FOH Mixer somewhere mid to rear of the room."
Exactly what the current plan is, for the short-term.
Long-term all of this will change more to a stage rig set-up. We are researching sequencers/vst software programs for the long-run. Thanks for the suggestion for Reason. That's what we were thinking too, or Reaper and Komplete (whichever edition of Komplete is up at that point). All of this to watch the budget.

I was "tasked" with this, because I run a SaphirePro40/Reaper set-up and keys at home.. but obviously, that does not make me an expert on stage set-ups. I am just the only one in church doing any form of digital work right now... but again... this does not necessarily make me reliable, just learning even more. This information, from everyone, is all good stuff. It's All good.

I'm researching keys at this point and will take suggestions from ya, if you have some that you love. It certainly will have to have actual MIDI, that's for sure... and hopefully a nice set of ports, in general. Certainly 1/4 outs and/or RCA outs. It just seems that all of the professional keyboards have all of this. This privia had a lot of promotions that tauted it as a professional peice of gear and that is just not true.

Thanks for your patience as you re-read through this entire post. The thread has been helpful, if not easy, and you've been kind enough not to take the time to sort through it all and discern, as well as to teach what was needed. Thank you so much.



Last edited by amynelson; 05/14/13 07:54 AM.