Mounting the Fantom At An Angle

[FGM]

Mine is set at 9 degrees pitch up...

And A0 and C8 are strictly at same hight, so zero roll.

Fantom 8 @9 degrees tilt.jpg (549.61 KiB) Viewed 1531 times

Oh, Roland, please, would you kindly place a tilt and roll indicator next to wheel #2...?

I could very well take the pressure at the floor and then at the top of the white keys so as to use both values and compute

P1=P0x(1-6.875585632x10^(-6)xH1)^5.25587611

and

P2=P0x(1-6.875585632x10^(-6)xH2)^5.25587611

so as to get H2-H1 and report hight of keyboard; but, sadly, my old smartphone lacks a barometer.

[PaulGreen]

Well as Jim Morrison would say, This Is The End.
Of the slanted Fantom experiment, that is; I believe the earth has at least a few more years in her.
After months and months of no problems, my right shoulder started calling very plaintively and I listened.
So what to do? Well, I went out and spent the rest of my lunch money on a motorized table, plopped the beast on it along with the speakers and a few outboard necessities.

The Slant Is Dead.jpg (591.42 KiB) Viewed 1344 times

I was using a thick wood butcher block style table but now with this thin tabletop, along with adjustable height chair with a back, allows me to brush my knees along the underside which puts me at the proper height to peer over and view the screen with relaxed arms and shoulders. I dished out two tunes just this afternoon - a promising beginning.
FGM. I know you have already spotted the speaker height. Let me just say, with my head down, those tweeters are pointed right at my ears and I get a beautiful center presence out of it. So no need to even fool with that.
I would highly recommend one of these powered tables if you are finding your body giving out within the first hour.

[FGM]

Lovely...
You even care the screen by using a soft stylus pen.
Yes, pictures today are very revealing...

SSP.jpg (387.76 KiB) Viewed 1268 times

As for mine, I went nearly effortless manual setting, saving launch money but using a tiny part of a breakfast's and kept cooking by the book (https://www.casadellibro.com/libro-coci ... 01/1234079 ).

I am still using 9 degrees of tilt, are you going fully flat ?

System X.jpeg (27.1 KiB) Viewed 1332 times

http://global.hamiltonstands.com/produc ... spx?id=183

The only issue is that placing the white keys at 71,5 cm makes the vertical leg almost touch the floor, having to place the three pedals board (RPU-3) on the left, not in front, and the single pedal (DP-10) on the right, as yours.
But, how funny, it turns out I found it to be a great way to have the pedals layered, being operated easily and much better than I first thought, my mind having been locked on a standard piano configuration, as in my old Yamaha CVP-96, still working as brand new (since 1996 and counting).

Pedals.jpg (1.88 MiB) Viewed 1246 times

Your Sennheiser HD660S must be great, HD650s rated 90 points according to the experts, placed 9th, and HD600 at 91 for the 7th, https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq ... RANKING.md
since they are still not yet considering the recently released Stealth, by Dan Clark Audio (will appear then as 1st) ( https://www.audiosciencereview.com/foru ... one.25920/ )

..and can be further improved via equalisation....

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq ... 0HD%20560S

https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq ... 20HD%20600

Are you happy with those Presonus Eris E5 XT ?
Decoupling them from the desk most probably will deliver a better performance: https://youtu.be/irIjbK9bfGk

Do they have any hissing while at idle ?
Are you using XLR or RCA ?
They have improved the old and now have a new elliptical waveguide for the HF driver that produces a wider sweet spot with more controlled vertical dispersion.
As for your "...and I get a beautiful center presence out of it." I would recommend panning every single tone/partial a bit so as to avoid any center as the exclusive origin of music while offering a clear different spatial placement for every voice involved, thereby expanding the stage in both, depth and wideness, far from narrow and boxed.

Since I see you take my comments nicely, I will continue building our friendship and therefore won't be able to leave behind the question: are you planning on adding a subwoofer ? Pipe organs should make your legs catch the rattle while your chest feels it deep inside and close to the heart, returning the music to where it all started.

[PaulGreen]

Good comments all.
Fantom is now flat. I will try that for awhile and see the results on my body and my mind. My goal is to get the instrument, and even the self, to disappear completely. Staying with one instrument for a long time helps immensely, hence the necessity for Roland to correct the impediments so that we can forget about the machine.
But I digress.
Stylus is great. My fingers are too big and the screen is too small (in 16 zone view).
System X is well designed and a great choice. I'm on carpet right so the wider footprint works + will play standing at least part of the session.
Definitely need more pedals:)) but was waiting for Roland to give them more functionality like scrolling through patches and such.
Sharp eye on the speakers. Yes the Eris do hiss a bit but you have to have your ear right next to them to hear it and the price was right. They are on the 1/4" mains. I will definitely get around to isolating them, good point. No sub woofer in my future. If I worked in the basement I might reconsider.
I splurged on the headphones and even went with a mic amp so that I could plug the phones into Fantoms balanced outputs. The only negative is that I had to go back and tweak all of my tunes! Fantastic sound from a purely fanboy perspective. I don't mix for a living so cannot comment further.
Surely something in your song deserves center stage?

P

[FGM]

I am stil trying to understand why you play standing, but given the easily achieved different heights with the new desk, it must be an added luxury granting healthier different body positions, with their obvious benefits.

Also, subbass does not mean bothering the neighborhood, just getting sound with a better body. Anyway, it is very much related to the pitch ranges used, so the need might not arise at all. The brain adjusts itself to what is heard and even adds what was supposed to come sounding next even if it doesn't finally come into scene. Truly human, to the point to having the need to change, whatever the tool we use, from time to time so as to appreciate again what already is used on a daily basis.
Regarding the pedals, of course you can already change scenes using them, if I am understanding well you thing the contrary...? Why ? Pedal increase, decrease, scene up, scene down, next scene, previous scene are settings already available, depending on where you are: plain scenes or scenes chains. The only pedal glued to its function is the HOLD pedal.

I thought you could use a Y cable (included ?) to connect the headphones to the dedicated plug, so I don't quite understand that mic amp... Isn't it better, cheaper and easier to go monitors to XLR and headphones to 1/4 stereo plug ? And why did you "...had to go back and tweak all of my tunes!"...?

For center stage I always understood disappearing loudspeakers, not just a center point for music to emanate from.

[PaulGreen]

Sennheiser says of the HD 660 S:
"They fully reveal their potential when connected to the balanced outputs of a dedicated headphone amplifier such as the Sennheiser HDV 820 or to the balanced output of a mobile digital audio player." I'll second that. I ended up going with the iFi ZEN CAN Balanced Desktop Headphone Amp, also excellent.

I guess I could "Y" out of the Fantom's XLR outputs and feed the speakers as well. Speakers generally don't get turned on until I start mixing and so far I'm quite happy with them connected to the unbalanced mains. Just for curiosity's sake, I will probably give it a try though :))

On pedals, I like to scroll through and try different patches while the song is playing. I would prefer to do that with a pedal. When concocting my own patches I would again prefer to scroll through the partials with a pedal.

Center stage, sound stage, disappearing loudspeakers? All describing much the same concept, don't you think?

[FGM]

I don't think a Fantom owner is in the need to add an amplifier for the headphones since Fantom already has what I suppose being a great DAC and great headphone amplification.
Sennheiser says what is said to most users bearing in mind it is a high impedance (>32 Ohms) headset, having 217 average over a 40-15000 Hz range: since your smartphone won't be able to drive them, buy a dedicated amplifier, and since it will most probably come with XLR output, use it to get the best gain and performance while noise isolated.

But they would surely sound great connected to your Fantom, and probably even better. There's a dedicated plug for them and Roland recommends 65 Ohms or as close as possible.

About your headphone amplifier...

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/foru ... amp.25224/

...and about the headphones...

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/foru ... 468/page-1