MONTGOMERY, Ala., August 13, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- The
Montgomery Performing Arts Centre (MPAC) now has an audio mixing
workflow worthy of the theater's sonic characteristics, with the
recent additions of Yamaha RIVAGE PM7 and CL5 digital consoles.
"We have a killer acoustic room with great sound treatments,"
said Bill Young, senior technical
director at MPAC. "Since opening in 2008, we've made serious
upgrades in our hall's design and loudspeaker systems and these new
consoles were the final piece. Now we can hear what our system
should really sound like."
Many of the musical acts that play at MPAC don't tour with
front-of-house (FOH) or monitor consoles as part of their regular
inventories. As a result, the MPAC team has often had to rent
consoles to accommodate each tour.
"We needed house consoles that would step us up sonically and
also be as 'rider-friendly' as possible with little training time
needed for tour engineers who might be unfamiliar with the desks,"
Young said.
Young noted that since the PM7 and CL5 are widely used and their
features are so familiar to engineers across all genres, most acts
now are comfortable using the MPAC's new house console set-up, in
turn reducing MPAC's rental frequency.
The Yamaha consoles were chosen due to a recent "surge in CL
series and RIVAGE PM7 desks being accepted or requested on riders,"
a trend Young attributed to the fact the consoles combine all the
features live sound engineers commonly request: comfortable
ergonomics, logical fader layouts, an easy-to-navigate menu system,
the ability to save and easily recall settings from previous
productions and enough inputs/outputs to support any type of
performance.
"The PM7 and CL5 addressed all our points and then some," he
added.
MPAC also hosts non-music events like speaker conferences and
dance competitions and their new audio mixing capabilities allow
the team to easily handle this diverse workload.
The consoles run on a redundant Audinate Dante network using
Yamaha 16-port network switches to manage primary and secondary
lines into the consoles for fail-safe operation. "If the primary
network goes down then the secondary takes over immediately," he
said.
This also gives Young the flexibility to use either desk at FOH
or monitors. "If we need 20 stereo ear mixes for a show, then the
PM7 goes to monitors," he said. "Another show may only need six
wedge mixes on stage so then the CL5 takes the monitor job. We can
do either easily with the added benefit of multitracking everything
for a live recording, for later editing in post-production or doing
virtual soundchecks, all without having another copper split. The
possibilities are endless."
MPAC is using Yamaha Rio I/O boxes running Yamaha sample rate
conversion HY cards to support different sample rates.
"We can run the PM7 at FOH at 96 kHz and the CL5 on monitors
operating at 48 kHz," he said. "This card lets us use both consoles
at those different rates and the Dante technology figures it out
and makes it work. It's human-friendly."
The Yamaha equipment was supplied by Rod
Sintow of Pro Sound & Video, Miami, Fla. Both desks are housed in
custom-made flip cases built in Poland by Lukasz
Zawada's ZCase Company for fast one-person deployment. Young
also credits MPAC's management, especially GM Allen Sanders, with making audio quality a
priority for the guests and performing artists, and that includes
the upgrade to the Yamaha consoles.
"Unlike older theaters built mainly to amplify the spoken word,"
he said, "this is a 'dead' room, so for amplified music, it's a
sound man's dream."
About Yamaha
Yamaha Corporation of America is one of the largest subsidiaries of
Yamaha Corporation, Japan and
offers a full line of award-winning musical instruments, sound
reinforcement, commercial installation and home entertainment
products to the U.S. market. Products include: Yamaha acoustic,
digital and hybrid pianos, portable keyboards, guitars, acoustic
and electronic drums, band and orchestral instruments, marching
percussion products, synthesizers, professional digital and analog
audio equipment, Steinberg recording products and NEXO commercial
audio products, as well as AV receivers, amplifiers, MusicCast
wireless multiroom audio systems, Blu-ray/CD players, earphones,
headphones, home-theater-in-a-box systems, sound bars and its
exclusive line of Digital Sound Projectors. Yamaha markets
innovative, finely crafted technology and entertainment products
and musical instruments targeted to the hobbyist, education,
worship, music, professional audio installation and consumer
markets.
SOURCE Yamaha