Best way to connect my Apogee Quartet to an Electric Piano?

[Ludem90]

Hi guys, this is my first post. I recently purchased a Quartet by Apogee in a Pro Tools Bundle, so far, I love everything about this and can't get enough of how good the quality is. There's just one thing i'm not sure about, I'm trying to connect my Electric Piano to the Quartet but i'm not sure the best way to connect it is. The Piano has two Headphone instrument Jack Outputs and a Pedal Output.

This is the back of my Piano


Thanks for any help!

[Darryl Ramm]

You want to connect this to do what? Record the audio out of the piano and/or record MIDI? Do you want to record stereo or mono audio? Do you want to use that MIDI to play back through the piano or through a virtual instrument (VI)?

And to sort out some naming, that is an expression pedal *input* not output, and the 1/4" sockets are likely left and right line level outputs. Not headphone outputs.

But let's do the simplest thing just to start... record the mono output from the piano. Check the piano doc form how to set the output to mono and which socket that is in (usually the one marked left). Connect that output to a line level input on the interface. Create a mono audio (not instrument) track in Pro Tools, set its input to whatever input you connected the piano to, and record arm that track, press record and play on the transport and audio should be recording into Pro Tools. Check the piano documentation...The piano hopefully has balanced TRS line outputs which means you should use a 1/4" TRS (tip-ring-sleeve) to 1/4" TRS balanced cable to connect the piano to one of the combo-sockets line level input on your interface. You must go into that combo socket with a 1/4" phono plug not an XLR plug. But just to get started even a unbalanced guitar/bass instument cable should work if that is all you have.

But now how do you monitor through Pro Tools or not? Track in stereo? Maybe go into a DI input to tweak input levels if needed? Record MIDI? Use a VI?, ... Hopefully you should realize what is involved is much more than just connecting these things. And DUC is not the place to find how to do basic stuff with Pro Tools, for that there are many great tutorials on YouTube, the Pro Tools documentation etc. and you should probably start ny looking for tutorials on YouTube.

[Ludem90]

Sorry about the errors, I rushed the post cause I wanted a quick response to order on Amazon for a net day delivery but I realised i'm in no rush to purchase anything for it. Thanks for the reply, I tried out your Mono output advice and it works perfectly, i'll check Youtube for Tutorials in the future but nothing will be as specific as what people on this Forum for this product say.