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#38560 - 08/17/10 12:31 AM Mixer to home theater receiver?
Rich Z Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 08/06/10
Posts: 30
Yeah, well, I have all these speakers stored in the dining room along with several home theater receiver/amplifiers, and I'm thinking, WHY buy keyboard amps for the keyboards I want to play with? Perhaps just running the keyboards into a mixer and then to something like the phono input on the receiver would suffice. I think a decent subwoofer would sure help out as well.

Any thoughts? Or is this just way off the wall and I'll have problems with impedance matching or other incompatibilities?

I know the wife SURE wants that crap out of her dining room, and I am cleaning out a room right now in another building to maybe set up as a sort of studio with all the keyboard stuff and one of my desktop computers. Need to run ethernet over there, though, from the house.

But I really need to have some idea if this will even work. Once I get those speakers out of the dining room, my wife will be standing at the door with a gun to keep me from bringing them back if it DOESN'T work.

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#38561 - 08/17/10 04:55 AM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver?
Fran Carango Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 05/26/99
Posts: 9673
Loc: Levittown, Pa, USA
I think for a "home studio"..it can work out fine, with moderate volume levels..

Since you already have the gear..why not try it...

I would suggest ..you be careful, if you are editing for "gigging"..your sound will be a lot different thru "pro" sound systems..
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#38562 - 08/17/10 09:44 AM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver?
Rich Z Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 08/06/10
Posts: 30
Actually this will be completely for the enjoyment of playing (for both my wife and I), and I have no desire to play publicly. Not that I delude myself to thinking I have that kind of talent anyway.

I'm just hoping I won't run into impedance matching problems or have those nagging hums that can drive you crazy with audio gear sometimes.

Thanks!

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#38563 - 08/17/10 09:32 PM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver?
TheSonicEnergyAuthority Offline
Member

Registered: 07/14/00
Posts: 307
Loc: Peterborough,Cambridgeshire,UK
I run my mixing desk into my hi-fi amp without any such issues, but I would say you should use an aux input on the amp, and not the phono input.
If your keyboard mixer has the higher 'pro' +4dBu output, there is a chance that it might overwhelm the theatre amp input if running the mixer into the red (like DJ's love doing). You can get in line attenuators, but as I said, I've not had issues myself.

Providing the all the equipment's power is sourced from the same point, you shouldn't have any ground loop issues (so no hum).
Even if despite your best efforts the dreaded hum does appear, a ground loop isolator will resolve them.
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#38564 - 08/18/10 11:15 PM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver?
Rich Z Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 08/06/10
Posts: 30
Thanks for the tip to use the AUX input. I'll give that a whirl when the rest of my cables show up. I bought a Behringer RX1602 Eurorack Pro mixer to use with this.

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#38565 - 08/19/10 10:17 AM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver?
Rich Z Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 08/06/10
Posts: 30
Well, I got those cables in and hooked everything up to test it out. I was a little apprehensive as the cables running from the mixer to my HT receiver are 50 ft. long. But I hooked up the Ensoniq ESQ-1 and the Yamaha DGX-640 and it sounds excellent! No hum or distortion, just nice clean sound. DEFINITELY an improvement in the bass department.

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#38566 - 08/19/10 02:53 PM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver?
TheSonicEnergyAuthority Offline
Member

Registered: 07/14/00
Posts: 307
Loc: Peterborough,Cambridgeshire,UK
Glad you sorted it, and great to hear that there's been no technical problems..

A 50 foot lead.. how big is your room?
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#38567 - 08/19/10 06:03 PM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver?
Rich Z Offline
Junior Member

Registered: 08/06/10
Posts: 30
Quote:
Originally posted by TheSonicEnergyAuthority:
Glad you sorted it, and great to hear that there's been no technical problems..

A 50 foot lead.. how big is your room?


Well, funny you should mention that about the 50 ft. lead....

This was actually a proof of concept for me, just to see if this would work at all. The keyboards are in the back of the family room, so the HT receiver is actually across the room. It's actually 28 ft. away, as the crow would crawl it, but I wanted to have the cables run along the walls, which tacked on quite a bit of footage. I have a 7.1 HT system (actually 7.4 as I have four subwoofers), and of course the back speakers are located where the keyboards are. So in effect, there is about 115 ft of cable running from the keyboards to those back speakers which are closest to my ears. I didn't notice this when just checking for signal clarity but my wife actually noticed that the notes weren't sounding exactly when she pressed the keys. When I took a closer look (or listen) to it, the delay between pressing the key and it making a note that we could hear, the delay was enough that it seemed that the note was being produced on the bounceback of the key, and not actually on the keypress itself. I thought perhaps it was the mixer introducing this delay, so I just ran the cable direct, and it pretty much proved it is the cable lengths themselves causing the problem. Interestingly enough, it not only affected that delay I mentioned, but it also removed the sharp edge of the note, apparently because the notes were sounding in those speakers in a worst case scenario. Heck, now that I'm thinking of it, it may not be the cable lengths at all, but just the fact that the back speakers generally do act as an echo for the main speakers by introducing a delay. Matter of fact, I think my receiver even has an adjustment for the amount of delay to the back speakers, if I remember correctly.

No real killer, as once I get the floor done over in the other building, this will all be moved over there in a 10x20 room anyway, and I can make certain to arrange the setup to keep the cable runs as short as feasible and position the keyboards more to where the center listening point should be.

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#326743 - 06/18/11 01:44 PM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver? [Re: Rich Z]
Uncle Dave Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 12/01/99
Posts: 12800
Loc: Penn Yan, NY
Turn off the surround and run straight stereo for the best sound. Surround has a built in delay and colors the tone as well.
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#330021 - 08/04/11 11:39 PM Re: Mixer to home theater receiver? [Re: Uncle Dave]
Nigel Offline
Admin

Registered: 06/01/98
Posts: 6482
Loc: Ventura CA USA
You're dead right Dave straight stereo is a must for a relatively uncolored response.

And that was a good point about sbout using the AUX iput not PHONO. The PHONO input has quite radical EQ that is intended to compensate for frequencies that needed to be cut to make a stable audio track when cut to vinyl. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization


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