MAINSTAGE KEYS
3 KEYS TO BETTER AUDIO | David Pfaltzgraff
We’ve all seen it when visiting a new church. give up the entire idea. After all, there’s nothing If you’re not familiar with this approach, it’s
Maybe you’ve even seen it on your own church else like a ground loop hum or white noise hiss really simple. All you need is a simple adaptor
stage. It’s a sight that strikes fear into the in an otherwise great-sounding setup to keep a cable that plugs into your computer’s built-in
hearts of any well-respected audio engineer: a worship leader up at night. headphone jack on one end and gives you a
couple of quarter-inch outputs on the other
mess of cable-spaghetti on stage underneath
the keys rig, complete with adaptor cables So in this article I’m going to touch on three that then connect to your soundboard, likely
almost assuredly purchased from a 90’s era common ways you can connect the audio through a pair of direct-boxes.
RadioShack. from your software-based worship keys rig to your soundboard. These methods each have This approach has some real benefits: the
One of the greatest things about hardware their pros and cons and I’ll try to breeze past only cost is an adaptor cable which can be
keyboards is that they ‘just work’. You all of the hype that often gets pulled into these found easily online for less than ten dollars,
don’t have to understand how to choose a conversations in the dark halls of anonymous it’s simple to understand because almost
computer, connect a midi controller, or make internet forums to explain what each method everyone is familiar with how to connect to a
the right audio connections. Just plug in to your can actually do for you. headphone jack, and it doesn’t require much
tech-savviness to tell your software that you
soundboard and play.
Let’s start with the simplest (and also least
As software-based keys rigs have grown in
I know that some of you automatically shrink
popularity an entire new group of worship
musicians have had to begin to learn about
want to use it.
expensive) option.
YOUR COMPUTER’S BUILT-IN HEADPHONE JACK
back at the mention of using the headphone
jack and I get it. Some folks find that the
connecting a computer to a front-of-house
soundboard, often with less than stellar results. Yes, in my opinion the oft’ scorned headphone headphone jack is more prone to signal noise
This final step in the ‘MIDI keys rig’ setup jack should get a spot in this conversation and or audio failure than other solutions, but I tend
process is often the one that causes people to doesn’t deserve all the hate it receives. to think that those issues don’t happen to
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September 2019
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