quick question

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

You won't be able to hear any delay with that cable length unless the speakers are 30 meters apart as well.

Something to back up my claim: http://avstomusic.blogspot.nl/2011/07/does-audio-cable-length-matter.html

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. 

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

  On 9/27/2017 at 1:49 PM, mcbpete said:

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?

It's a bit of a shitter isn't it, yeah make sure to keep the frequencies below 6 MHz or you'll get boo'd out the auditorium ....

attack times less than 1.5e-7 seconds long most idm 2018

getting boo’d out the auditorium most idm 2018

having more than one thing most idm 2018 most idm 2018

i did think that, but it pays to not assume and turn up to a setup where every note you play is coming out the speakers 0.4ms after you play it.

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?

yeah, this kind of stuff comes into play when you have large distances between source and destination, like a festival with 100,00 people or a stadium. You should be good.

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.

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.

apparently you cant even get 30 metre guitar cables because the signal deteriorates unless the signal is balanced, so im screwed.

You're not sending guitar signal out of the piano though? Yours is line level, so maybe there are some 30 meter balanced cables available for you?

Aye, just get some normal speaker cable - wire a jack at the keyboard end ... you'll be fine

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.

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)