Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Digital Pianos - Electronic Pianos - Synths & Keyboards Line outs recording vs USB recording

I noticed some guys use line outs to record their DPs even though the instruments allow to stick USB flash drive in them and record directly on it. I wonder why

In case of Stu at Merriam Music it's probably more convenient to record all the audio and video at once with no worries about syncing them afterwards with all the editing happening before uploading the final video.

Plus the internal recorder might prevent him from accessing all the various features of the piano like changing sounds, playing with some settings etc.

In the case of youtube reviews or performances, I figure a lot of people have line-out already set up for standard studio recordings. They can record and mix real-time, and it just works as part of a standard workflow. Relatively few pianos have USB audio interfaces still, and recording everything to USB drive takes away a lot ability to change things real-time, reset/power-cycle the piano between segments, and I suspect there's a lot of extra work introduced in syncing/mixing/working with multiple unnamed, untimestamped files, etc. IOW, a lot of extra work.

Ive done some enough wondering about the same as you ( plus one or more other variables you did not mention) that i suspect there is no single reason but several that any person wanting to record can pick/choose preferred methods.

I further suspect that what both c-e-n and Gombessa answered accounts for some of the answers but not all of them. I also suspect there are answers we here may never know possibly because of where those answers might lead.

- as for recording via a DP’s line outs, its easy to assume this will be done by a portable recorder, or by some other special purpose audio recording device, but neither of these fit with c-e-n’s answer that also includes recording of synchronized video …. but i’m willing to guess there is a way for a recording device to be jacked into the DP’s line outs while also recording the video aspects of the performance.

- as for Gombessa’s suggestions, there is a lot implied there which i do not know much about as to how to effect such studio setups, so i can only take for granted there are ways available for those so minded. Just on the internet video angle, ive watched enough of those to have seen enough clues to know that often times the videos are done in ways that obscures the viewer’s efforts to know - how did they do that?

- given the apparent popularity of VIs/VSTs, might as well add - some guys record line outs, some via USB flash drive, some via USB Audio running from DP to the computer hosting the VI & VST & DAW & other studio-like programs.

Totally agree. It depends on application, which includes effects processing considerations ------ as in whether or not the effects processing with onboard (ie. in-built digital piano features) can be directly bundled into the USB recording. Otherwise, if the plan is to use the piano output along with other instruments, and the bulk of the processing is to be done somewhere else (ie. externally), then that can be sorted with line-out.

To cut down on introduced noise (aside from sample quality) ------ having differential signals/balanced signals is nice, but maybe most digital pianos don't have that sort of thing, and they just have regular line-out. So if anybody is happy with results from USB recording already, then that can help to cut down on extra noise that can get in if the digital piano audio output needs to get transferred to an external processing unit (via 'single ended' output style ----- not differential style). But people have been doing the line-out thing for ages and ages ------ so as long as we do what we can (configuration etc) to minimise introduced noise, then that will be good. But then again, we know that some people just record anyway, regardless of how much noise gets in hehehe

If a digital instrument has 24 bit samples, and the recording to a USB flash drive is 16x44.1 then a higher quality recording often can be made by recording line out at 24x44.1, performing post-recording mastering, and then dithering down to 16x44.1. If I'm recording a DP with 16 bit samples, I would just use the builtin recorder to produce 16x44.1 directly, and skip some of the mastering steps.