My equipment:
Digital Piano - Yamaha p255
Audio Interface - Roland quad-capture

I bought one 1/4 inch jack from a store near my house and connected my piano to the audio interface, and when I listened to that recording, there was a lot of noise, which I think came from the cable, as it was also when I did not play a note, and also, my equipment is certainly decent. I used it later with an electric guitar cable that I had which is also more expensive, and it was a little better but still, if I turned the input volume on the audio interface a little over the half, it would start making noise, and if I didn't, the recording would just be too quiet.

My question is, should I buy more expensive pl cables? Most expensive cables are designed by description to guitars, so I'm not sure if I would waste my money..

Would be glad for advices how to solve my problem.

PS. I know that it would be better to use 2 pl cables instead of one, but I'm not sure if that has to do with the noise problem.

  • What happens if you turn the output volume of the keyboard all the way up and turn the input volume of the interface down until the levels are right? – Todd Wilcox Aug 8 '18 at 12:14

If the two cables are electrically equivalent and neither is actually faulty, I suspect you're kidding yourself that the expensive one sounded better (a common delusion in the hi-fi world :-)

Use the [L/L+R] Aux Out jack on the back of your piano into the L input of the Roland quad-capture.

There's a Hi-Z switch on the back of the Roland. Make sure it's set to off. (That's for directly connecting an electric guitar.)

Keep the volume slider of the piano well up, or if this is annoyingly loud in the piano's speakers try bypassing the volume slider, as detailed in the Yamaha manual excerpt below. This will send a robust signal level to the Roland. Don't be frightened of having the input level controls on the Roland low. Low for a Line input, high for a Mic input is fine.

(The manual also speaks of low-resistance plugs and cable. This is merely confusing. You can't buy high-resistance ones, and extra-low resistence isn't a feature of expensive cables, however much the advertising may waffle on about 'oxygen-free copper' and other snake oil. A cable for this job needs to be adequate, but adequate is enough!)

You will get a better recording by using two cables. But it will be better in terms of stereo effect, not signal quality.

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  • Best answer I have got so far on stackexchange. For anyone with this specific piano, you need to choose "2" on function 6.6, and then set function 6.7 to max value (20) or whatever suits for you. – sermonion x Aug 8 '18 at 15:36
  • Did it work? :-) – Laurence Payne Aug 8 '18 at 15:40
  • Yep. By the way, are you saying that there isn't a difference between cheap and more expensive PL cables? If so then why can guitar cables get so pricey? – sermonion x Aug 8 '18 at 16:03
  • 1
    Alright, so for a digital piano recording, just a pair of 1/4 inch cables from the local store will do the job? – sermonion x Aug 8 '18 at 16:34
  • 1
    Yes. To be (almost) honest, the proverbial 'bit of damp string' could do this job. Just make sure it's long enough! – Laurence Payne Aug 8 '18 at 17:09

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