I've said it before, and I'll say it again--anyone that believes their audiences are enjoying the stereo the performer hears on stage is only fooling themselves. In fact, if you look at the dynamics of a stereo sound system you'll quickly discover why movie theaters, and manufacturers of home theater systems went to 5.1 surround sound systems. When they were using stereo systems, only the audience members sitting dead center between the speakers heard stereo. All others heard a preponderance of either the right or left channel--but not stereo. Essentially, those sitting to once side of your venues are being cheated because they cannot enjoy what is coming out of the other speaker.

These problems can readily be solved by installing a 5.1 surround sound system with speakers stetegically positioned for overlapping coverage. OR, you can perform using a Bose PAS system. One individual put it best when he said "Mono--what a great concept--everyone in the room gets to hear the same thing."

When I was using the Barbetta Sona 32CS system, the smartest thing I did was position those speakers very close to me, one at each end of the keyboard and about 6 feet behind me. There was sufficient crossover so the audience essentially heard mono.

For those who think the Yamaha live grand piano sounds thin, I created a much fuller version that you can download from here

Fran,

Though we often agree on many aspects of the music biz, your statement about the audience not believing what they are hearing is no longer an issue. Most of our audiences think our keyboards are nothing more than Karaoke machines, and more often than not, they don't have a clue as to what the hell we are doing while onstage. They walk up to you while you are singing and playing and ask stupid questions. They'll say things such as "Do you have anything in there by Frank Sinatra?" almost as if you could answer them while in the middle of the song. The bottom line is they don't have a clue, and probably could care less--they just want to be entertained. They did the same stupid assed thing when I was playing a 12-string Yamaha guitar in a smoke-filled bar and using a Roland drum machine for rythm backing. Technology will not change this, and even if you were playing a grand piano and singing your heart out the idiots would still come up and ask stupid questions.

Cheers,

Gary

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Travlin' Easy