Originally Posted By: pooch
After a l o n g break (due to my wife's illness) we are hoping to get back out there and gig... we have a BOSE L1 - 2 vocals, keyboard, and backing tracks going into the Tone Match...looking for an update to my ancient tiny iPod to play our WAV files... also, do I need some sort of DI box to get a better quality sound? And, my Roland FP-4 piano is sending a stereo signal into the mono Tone Match, making for a very thin, cheesy piano sound thru the PA... any thoughts/advice on these would be much appreciated...


You are experiencing the classic problem when you take a stereo piano sound and "sum to mono" through a single PA. Cheesy is a good way to describe the effect and happens because some of the L and R frequencies interfere with each other before they leave the speaker and reach your ears. You only get the problem with stereo piano sound because most other instruments are basically mono to start with. If you use the single piano L/Mono out connection you get the same cheesy sound because the sum to mono happens inside the piano.

I was also disappointed when I bought a single Bose Compact and eventually ended up buying a second one! I can now keep L and R separate and also pan L fully L and R fully R in my mixer before the two Bose. The sound I hear from the Bose is now no different from listening with phones.

The SpaceStation is an interesting option which in theory maintains L and R separation with a single unit. The two methods should solve the basic problem i.e. no loss in quality because there is no summing to mono before the sound leaves the speakers. I would need convincing that the Spacesation has an additional benefit of maintaining stereo separation all round the room. I suspect the good sound is more a result of the no summing to mono rather than a magical room stereo separation.

Having said the above I wonder how much an audience will hear the same sound that is so annoying to the performer. We are so used to the great pianos we hear through our phones that the cheesy sound from a single speaker is very distracting. In my case I think it actually effects my playing so for that reason alone it's worth fixing.

Regards
Tony