I play keyboards and there's a massive difference between playing modern patches in stereo vs. mono.

I called Bose today and they told me the unit is mono. Therefore, I would need 2 of the units to play in stereo.

Unfortunately, this means approx 140 pounds of weight and $4K of $$$$ to use this system.

Too bad. Otherwise, it sounds fantastic!

Another thing, it's gonna be hard to test this system in Hawaii! There are Bose stores but no Guitar Center.

I'm not a keys player, so I really don't have a valuable opinion on the patches in stereo vs. mono. However, I can say that if your bandmate has a system, you can send your stereo signal to a mate's system. You will lose out on one of the cool properties of the system when running in stereo, eye ear harmony, but having a choice to do either is great if you ask me (assuming your keyboard can work that way).

I'll post a copy in the Keyboards forum as well.

As for Hawaii, we'll get there eventually (and I'm going to volunteer tomorrow). And, if you just can't wait for us, you can order a system and play with it for 90 days and if you don't like it, we'll pay to ship it back ... even from Hawaii. How cool is that? We know this is an, "I've got to try it to believe it" breakthrough so we're backing the product with a risk free trial.

There's a question that hit me last week, but didn't make it to my fingers until now... How long will you be offering the "risk free trial"?

For a limited time for sure. We'll keep it going through the holidays I'm pretty sure. Right now our challenge is keeping enough inventory to fill orders quickly. WARNING! Sales-like statement: The sooner you get in queue, the sooner you get your system. End of warning.

Concerning stereo- Stereo stems from the desire for recordists to emulate the sound of a good live performance. To get the vocal in the middle you place equal parts in the left and right speakers, and what you get is a "ghost" vocal which sounds like it's coming from the middle. It was originally only intended for recordings, because in a live performance there is a very limited "sweet spot" where only a few in the audience hear the vocal coming from the middle, which is where the vocalist physically is. If you are closer to one of the speakers, the vocal will sound like it's coming from the location of that speaker only, which creates a disconnect from the reality of where the vocalist is actually singing from. When you hear a great unamplified music performance, each voice and instrument comes from its own unique location, and when the musicians play well together you get a perfect blend of music. Our system brings the benefits of the intimate live acoustic performance to larger audiences. In other words, it amplifies each individual instrument and voice while maintaining their unique location. There are some very nice stereo effects used on recordings today, but their effectiveness is hard to realize in live performance. I believe that it feels more natural to play the instrument as it was intended (mono)and when combined with the other instruments in the ensemble it creates a larger-than-life, almost "Panavision" type of effect for the musicians and the audience. Once one experiences this dramatic effect, I think it will effectively eliminate the desire to run the instrument in stereo. When I first tried the system, I insisted on running my vocal in stereo to realize stereo effects; but it really just muddied-up the sound, and I enjoyed singing much more in mono. If your effects can't be summed electronically to mono, you can plug each output into channels 1 and 2 or 3 and 4.

It would seem to me that people are getting a little confused by the use of the words mono & stereo. Singers can not sing in stereo, they are a single point source,(only one mouth each.)
What this new concept does, is allow the band to paint their own soundstage, with all members of the group appearing to emanate from their position on stage. This is a much more complex and richer picture than simply two channel or so called stereo. Not only are players positioned in a left to right axis but can be positioned in the front to rear plane also.
All this without phase cancellation or smearing, WOW am I excited to hear this!

[This message was edited by Ken-at-Bose on Tue October 28 2003 at 07:33 PM. I changed "emenate" to "emanate".]

[This message was edited by Ken-at-Bose on Tue October 28 2003 at 07:33 PM.]

Everything I read here about the stereo image is true ... except that:

It's true for a "group" of muscians.
For the very small band of say 1 to four, stereo becomes very important.

For example, listen to the difference between an upright piano, and grand piano. Basically, because the grand piano has the sound board in the horizontal plane rather than the vertical, the sound spreads around a room creating a "stereo" type of effect (a little liberty here).
When I play my guitar in a small room, I always use a (real) stereo system. The difference is quite considerable, sort of the same difference as the upright to the grand.
You might want to investigate this application, there are many small combos out there that need a high quality system such as this.