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quick question


pcock

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if i run my digital piano through a 30 metre audio cable to the speakers in a restaurant, will there be any perceivable time delay, considering the piano has an almost immediate attack time. the very beginning of the note is the most important sound. 


forgot to mention, delay compared to the inbuilt speakers on the piano

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no, the speakers are just in the room, probably 10 metres from the piano. its just the cable has to be snaked round the entire room to be tucked away neatly, it cant go across the floor. 

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Electricity travels down a normal cable at approx 200 million meters per second so you'll probably be OK :)

Soooo, youre telling us that the delay caused by the cable will be perceivable if the attack time is less than 1.5e-7 seconds long?

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just run the piano through a delay unit with delay time set to a negative measure so the audio reaches the speakers before you've hit the keys. 


anywhere, where the hell are you playing? an old peoples home? don't you know that young people listen to synthesizer music these days?

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Cables no, electricity moves at the speed of light through a conductor.  Ten meters from a speaker is definitely going to be a pretty noticeable amount of delay though, I forget the exact figures but the threshold for audible latency through air is something around one meter.  Ten meters between the player and the monitors is more than enough to affect the timing of a performance.

 

If you're using an acoustic piano, or you have a monitor of some kind near you on the stage, its not going to matter much but if the only thing you can hear yourself through is a speaker 10 meters away there could be trouble.

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You'll get a bit over 2.5ms of delay per meter (varies depending on temperature and humidity, but not a lot), so if your monitor is two meters away you'll definitely be getting enough delay that you'll notice it, enough delay that if your audio interface had that much latency you'd probably be kind of annoyed.

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If you're just doing line level, you can use CAT5 network cable for long runs, you'll just have to make adapters (they're really overpriced if you buy them and there's nothing to them).  You can run I think three balanced line level signals for hundreds of meters on cat5 if you buffer it right, but even without buffering 50-100 meters probably won't be a problem.

 

100 meters of cat5 is going to be like $30 US; 100 meters of balanced audio cable is going to be a lot more expensive.

 

Some info here,but a bit of googling will turn up more details on building the actual adapters and things like that:

 

http://www.duxcw.com/faq/network/audio.htm

 

 

Should work for instrument level, too. 


Also if you play out a lot it's much easier to find cat5 cable than audio cable if you're in a strange town and need to get a replacement fast.

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  • 3 weeks later...

any decent microphone uses an xlr connection and is balanced. what leads you to believe your mic is unbalanced? i own a couple of vintage, very shitty consumer level mics that use tip sleeve connections. it is rare tho

 

 

seems off topic but, to add to RSP's post:

 

an option for long unbalanced runs would be a DI:

 

http://www.radialeng.com/jdi.php

 

you will want one designed to handle line level signals preferably with a pad for line level db reduction

 

you can then run xlr out (balanced)

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