Will my synth sound significantly better through a keyboard amp?

Right now, I am running my XP-30 into my bass amp when I want to jam. It sounds okay to me. Will a keyboard amp sound significantly better?

i used to have a behringer 300W bass amp

and now i use a hartke km100 150w ( i think )

and its a lot better, plus it has DI out, an EQ on the front and 4 inputs for seperate keys etc...

Depends on the amp. If you're gonna plug it into something cheap (Behringer...) it will sound cheap. Though, even some more pricey beasts can sound lame (Roland KC series comes to mind).

Try to get hold on Yamaha Stagepas for example, or some JBL Eon boxes, or a Motion Sound, Laney also has nice amps (AH150...) etc.

I'm not looking for anything major. Just something for jamming at the house -- I'm not a working musician. What wattage, speaker size and brands should I be looking at to keep up with a Tech 21 Trademark 30 guitar amp? How about something used and older that I can get cheaper?

Don't use guitar amps for keyboards.

Try finding a Laney AH150 or AH200, I was damn satisfied when I heard it, and thought "this would be nice to have at home"

A decent home stereo system will do too.

That's what I'm doing. I bought a decent home stereo amp and have my mixer directly into that with good speakers mounted on the wall. If you record your stuff on CD, it's going to be playing through a home stereo anyway. Might as well see what it sounds like through one before you burn it.

-Mc

Speakers mounted on the wall = up to quadruple of the perceived loudness of bass frequencies = inaccurate frequency response.

Unfortunately :/

Speakers should be on stands, and have free space around them so they can give more accurate freq response. When you mount a speaker directly to the wall, the wall acts like a bass reflex port and pumps up the bass to a lesser or greater degree, distorting the freq response...

I have Monitor Audio i-deck speakers, mounted to the wall at eye level and about a metre from my head. The frequency response is doubtless wonky because of the various cavities and resonances nearby but it still sounds very good. I'd add a subwoofer if I had the free bucks. The "quality" (meaning sounds nice to me) is at least as good as through my $1000 Motion Sound 200s; just nothing like as loud.

So I'll join the group that says (if the location is appropriate) use your stereo. And, BTW, stereo matters--a lot.

edit: Of course, you could run it through the bass amp as well as the stereo, which would probably sound pretty good.

+10,000 to Doug's statement!!!

Yes, because guitar amps generally have a little hotter circuitry because they are amplifying a magnetic pickup with no boost. Whereas a keyboard amp is more like a PA system thats running really clean. Also a lot of keyboard amps have a separate woofer and tweeter (or horn) with a crossover. This way one speaker isnt pulling double duty trying to recreate the highest highs and the lowest lows.

Dont buy anything in the roland kc series

Bass Amp?

I/m not sure how good the quality would be from using a bass amp?

While a keyboard amp *may* sound better, when I think of amp I think of

LOUD volumes and not sound quality.

If this is strictly for jamming try out a pair of used

Mackie (1st Gen) HR824s...

These aren't flat by a long shot and will make the sounds seem better than what they are and the Mackie's get loud as well.

Better than through guitar amp. Especially if the bass amp has tweeters.

Better than through guitar amp. Especially if the bass amp has tweeters.

No, I'm not running through the guitar amp. I meant a keybaord amp to keep up with a guitarist playing through a Trademark 30 when jamming at home.

Bass amps are designed for full range - bassists want to hear the highs they get from pops and slaps, as well as the lows.

Some keyboard players prefer them to keyboard amps because of the sound of the lows, while still having all the highs they could want.

well, technically they're mounted on shelves mounted on the wall but didn't want to get into details.

You're absolutely correct though.

Stereo matters if you sit in the ideal position to get the full effect.

I am from the good old days when "stereo" was something that was sorted out in the mix, not coming from the instrument itself.

This also means that i still run all my synths into the mixer as mono synths.

If i need a stero effect - that is exactly what effects boxes are designed to do.

A neutral amp with full range speakers will sound good. Even in mono.

What about an old Roland Cube 40 or Cube 60?

Be very careful running any keyboards through your home stereo. It is really not designed for it and there are many stories I have heard of people damaging their speakers this way. I can occur as simply as turning on the synth with the volume up of the stereo. If i had a decent stereo I wouldn't risk it. I have a {censored}ty stereo so I occasionally do risk it at low volumes. Definitely not for jamming with any other musos, even with a small guitar amp. You are asking for trouble in my opinion.

I'll have to respectfully disagree. You'll get no argument from me that sitting in the middle of the stereo field certainly does make for killer sound. However there's more benefits to stereo amplification than simply being able to sit in the stereo field. Many (if not maybe most) modern keyboards are designed as stereo instruments - meaning that if you want to get the rich timbre and complex sound textures that they're capable of - they need to be played through stereo amplification.

As a case in point - the flagship piano patches on my RD700SX sound like absolute {censored}e when played through a mono amp but come alive when played in stereo. If you want today's keys to sound their best - many of them really need to be played in stereo.

Let's just disagree.

But if you look at it - instruments do not naturally come in stereo versions*, not even pianos or drum sets where the only person who could actually hear a stereo separation is the player himself or people standing right in front of the instrument(s).

No audience in any room larger than a living room has ever heard an accoustic stereo piano or drum set. Unless they were doing powerful drugs.

So if it isn't natural for the original to be in stereo - why should it be for the emulation?

(Answer to the above rethorical question: With drum machines at least there is a point in spreading out the massive onslaught of frequencies to make a mix more transparent)

Second - most "stereo" sounds actually come from the effects and not the sound source so if you claim that stereo sounds come alive - as opposed to their mono counterparts - i would assume that that is because of poor programming/sampling on the manufacturers side counteracted by the clever use of effects.

Stereo (as in mixing a bunch of mono sound sources) is good for recorded material where it adds another dimension.

Live (as in everything involving actual playing, at home or in front of people) i would call it a waste.

*With the exception of a few synthesizers where you can route oscillators to different sides of a stereo output.

I've used an Ashdown combo in the past. At the time it was just to be heard during a jam session where the guitarist and bassist were running through half stacks. I was very surprised with the results and am shopping around to get myself something similar.

But if you look at it, acoustic instruments do not come in MONOPHONIC versions either. They generate sound from virtually infinite points of origin. A piano has multiple strings per note and the acoustic waves are very complex around each string and all the reflective and sympathetic resonance interations with other strings. Monophonic recording is the least capable method of picking up the complexity of the source. Stereo is a HUGE improvement over monophonic to pick up some of this complexity in the source. Although stereo is not as good as the original, it does give a large measure of the complexity for only double the reproduction, and even going to more recording channels won't give a much better reproduction of the original instruments.

Why do we and other animals have two ears? Somehow it has all worked out that one ear isn't enough and three are too many. I don't think that this fact is coincidental or random (although how it got that way may be due to natural selection). Stereo works best in nature. The evidence in nature for stereo listening is overwhelming, so I think that stereo is the most natural of all choices.

Second, it's false that most stereo sounds come from the effects. Nearly all of the major workstations and ROMplers have stereo multisamples that were recorded in stereo from the original instruments and that have been designed for stereo reproduction. These stereo multisamples can sound significantly worse when summed to mono and reproduced that way. If you are running a mono output, it is usually better to choose a mono multisample. Some modern synths can also do stereo starting from the oscillators or audio inputs and through the whole synth engine, not just the effects. I frequently use these stereo features in the structure to build up significantly better sounding patches before I bring in a single effect. In fact, often I will avoid using stereo effects on these patches in order to maintain the sound of the patch. On other patches I will use strong stereo effects like the LCR Delay - which is completely ruined when sent to a mono PA system. Some vocoders will also split up the bands into an interlaced/alternating stereo field that adds a lot of depth to the result that is lost with mono reproduction.

Stereo might be a poor approximation of the original, but it is generally a better approximation than mono. There is even some evidence that multiple output beyond stereo could improve the live reproduction sound, which is the design that BOSE is pushing with the PAS L1 & L2 pole speaker systems in which each performer could have a separate pole speaker or arranged in an arc behind the band. It remains to be seen if this will take hold because the PAS is so expensive, but it shows a potentially workable system that goes beyond stereo specifically to give a better multi-point audio system for live performances.

It is ridiculous to claim that just because an instrument takes up space in three dimensions and produces sound from multiple areas that it is not monophonic.

The point being that the ears only hear the monophonic mix of the instruments many resonating parts once the sound waves hit the ear drums.

Because in the end, all your ears hear is a monophonic mix of waves generated by an instrument.

The stereo part that the ears discern is where in the vicinity the monophonic sound source is located.

Stereo in human hearing is just a quick calculation of the time difference between the monophonic sound waves reaching the ears.

Because that is all stereo hearing in humans is. It has proven a good strategy for locating sounds in your surroundings.

Just because modern technology allows one to sample a sax not only at the bell, but also at the valves and possibly the mouthpiece, it does not mean that this artificial division of the sound components makes for a better synthetic sax in stereo. Because a natural sax does simply not have any audible stereo effects going on.