Piano Forum

Piano Board => Instruments => Topic started by: derschoenebahnhof on December 06, 2011, 06:45:00 PM

Title: Connecting Digital Piano to home stereo system
Post by: derschoenebahnhof on December 06, 2011, 06:45:00 PM

I have a Yamaha YDP-181 with 1/4" headphone out (no line out).

Some quick and dirty googling shows that there might be issues with the peaks on the signal from the DP being too strong for the home speakers (because of no compression). Some suggest that the brilliance could be adjusted to "mellow" on the digital piano to avoid that.

Also I am guessing the levels on headphone are not the same as line out.

What about connecting a laptop with PianoTeq to a stereo system would there be similar issues of peak signals possibly damaging the speakers?

What do you say?

Thanks!
CG

Title: Re: Connecting Digital Piano to home stereo system
Post by: ionian_tinnear on December 06, 2011, 07:42:14 PM

I've done both.  Keyboard and Laptops can be connected to a home stereo thru an Aux/Tape/CD input, but NOT turntable.

You do need to be careful, with the keyboard especially, to no have your volume to loud as the bass may overwhelm your speakers.  Just turn down the bass on the amp, and turn off the 'loudness' option if you have it.

Start with the keyboard at 1/2 to 3/4 volume, and your stereo set to low volume too.  When you play, if the sound is distorted, turn down the keyboard until the sound is clean no matter how hard you press the key.  Once clean, turn up the amp, slowly, until you reach a useful lever.

It will work fine, just start at low volumes, and adjust carefully.  How well really depends on your stereo and speaker quality.  I have Cerwin-Vega speakers, they can handle anything...

Title: Re: Connecting Digital Piano to home stereo system
Post by: derschoenebahnhof on December 06, 2011, 09:08:26 PM

Hi Ionian,

Sound advice. (Sorry, I couldn't resist that one  ;D)

I'll play it easy with the volume and keep my 3 years old away from the volume knob (once he turned the volume way up while playing a CD... I must have jumped all the way to the ceiling or something, but fortunately nobody's ears were hurt in the process).

I have a 5.1 speaker system from Logitech.

Cheers,
CG

Title: Re: Connecting Digital Piano to home stereo system
Post by: derschoenebahnhof on December 15, 2011, 07:24:54 PM

Ok, no problem connecting headphone out to stereo in of speaker system.

Since headphone out level is lower than line out, I had to crank the DP volume almost to the max, and keep the speaker system volume to about half. No distortion.

Now if only these Logitech Z5500 would stop popping every minute or so. But that's a different story  :P