FR3 XB using earphone and speakers together

[Windstrel]

Hi

Really enjoying our Roland FR3 XB and learning a lot from browsing this great forum.

Is there any way we can hear our sound through the earphone as well as the speakers? When the rest of the musicians are playing around us, it's often difficult to hear what we are doing.

Thanks

 

[JerryPH]

Technically it is possible but it would be a pain to setup. Now if you are in a band and on a stage, it would be the responsibility of the guy behind the mixer to place a "wedge" near you that you can hear yourself.

If you are talking like in a small group playing in a pub... we go back to a likely overly complex solution to a simple thing for the 3X. Stereo outputs to a small mixer, headphone jack converted to a earphone jack, custom earphones with lots of wire. I am not a 3X owner, so I don't know if it can even play through the speakers and outputs at the same time, or if the 3X even has outputs!

 

[Windstrel]

Thanks for your suggestions Jerry. I had not thought about taking the output to a mixer and splitting it. Of course as you say it would reduce the easy portability of the instrument, especially in the pub session situation which is our main problem.

The FR3 XB has separate earphone and speaker outputs plus an onboard speaker so can be used for strolling without any extra plugged in output devices. Using the earphone output switches off the onboard speakers which is great for silent practice for those that need that facility.

Interestingly we have realised that it might be better not to have speaker output in some sessions. Plugging in an earphone would give the opportunity of joining in without bothering anybody when we aren't used to playing particular tunes on the accordion. In such cases we currently reach for our fiddle or sax and miss out on the extra practice which is a shame because the whole point of the accordion was that we could play as a duo ie sax / accordion or fiddle / accordion and the more practice we can get towards this end the better.

Another alternative is to go down an octave as most of the racket is in the soprano range and it might be easier to hear ourselves that way.

Of course we could put on one of the wierder organ sounds...  but I don't think the traditional folk musicians would like that very much lol!

Thanks again for your input!

 

[Windstrel]

Eureka!

I've just discovered that the internal speakers are not switched off by default so all we have to do is plug the earphone into the speaker output sockets not the earphone output socket and we will be able to hear both the earphone output and the speaker output.

So simple.

Thanks again

 

[JerryPH]

Often the answers to our questions are happily no further than 2 minutes away with a little bit of playing/experimenting... glad to see that was the case here.