I own the M-480, and have used the
yamaha consoles many times.
They're both quite nice. Never heard any audio issues with either anytime, they both work fine when the
dsp is run hard (all channels busy) or not. I must say that if anyone was to
release a
console that had issues AT ALL when it was run hard, they would be in trouble. I've never had an issue with the M-400
console I had owned for the last 2 years, or my new M-480
console, or any of the ones I've sold to my clients - ever!
The biggest differences between the Roland M-480, and the
Yamaha LS-9 are:
* Without using any sort of effects insert: the LS-9 has the ability to do 2 comps per
channel (or 2 gates, or
de-esser, or whatever) and the M-480 can only do 1
comp and 1
gate per
channel. The M-480 does not seem to have a
de-esser yet.
* The street cost of the M-480 with it's built in digital
snake, is about $3000 - $3500 less than the LS-9 with it's digital
snake option. (for an apples to apples comparison). Of course the LS-9 is much less the the M-480 because of it's built in analog front end.
* The M-480 has the M-48 personal mixers perfectly integrated into it, it even has the ability to use one as an "engineers
monitor" to be able to remotely help someone in the band get settings dialed in by the engineer. You can save and recall all the settings of each m-48 independantly, and recall them to any other
unit, or recall to a different location if the way things were plugged in are different. Each M-48 can be assigned any of 40 possible channels to any of it's 16 stereo channels independently of any other
unit, so you don't have to force everyone to use the same channels in the same order. I think it's totally safe to say that the M-48's blow the aviom stuff out of the water, both sonically, functionally, and in terms of $ (when used with in-ear wireless systems)
Both systems can handle high
channel counts, LS9-32 (64 channels max) and the M-480 (60 channels max) out of a possible 80 addressable.
No touch screens on both, the menus are not as deep, and there are more buttons/knobs on the M-480 than the LS-9.
I know the M-480 can record 2-track to a usb stick, so does the LS-9 I believe.
The M-480 can also record 40 channels to hard disk (24bit, 48K) - works great! I've used that many times, and it sounds wonderful. It's about $800-ish for the kit with the software. I think the LS-9 can do something like that too somehow, right? Looks like the LS-9 can only do about 16-18 channels multitrack using one of the card slots... Maybe they have something else I don't know about?
I know the M-480 can do 16 aux busses and
LCR mains (19 busses total) plus 8 matrix busses (fully configurable) I think the LS-9 has about the same thing, but you have to get something else to get more outputs than the 16 that are built in.
The M-480 has DCA's (like most other consoles). The LS-9 has something kinda like it, using groups of faders that are linked together.. not quite the same thing... but it works.
Yeah there's always talk of Analog consoles vs Digital, Yeah - there are some old analog consoles that sound great. Fact is that we're talking about the differences/similarities between the two consoles here, ok? Most of the folks interested in this are looking for the total recall thing due to changing setups/multiple bands/multiple engineers/whatever...
I just wanted to give another OPINION on this, that's all.
