Yamaha LS9 ?

[Andy_Leviss]

I'll definitely do a more detailed write-up in the near future, but for the short version, it revolves around using a console that has VCA assignment automation as part of it's scene recall. Any digital console with DCAs, of course, has this, and higher end analog consoles do (Midas Heritage series, the XL_ series, and of course the top end in theatre is Cadac).

Generally, the last three VCAs are assigned permanently to the band, the band reverb, and the vocal reverb, so they can be easily adjusted and ridden during the show. Then, the remaining VCAs are dynamically reassigned throughout the show so that they're controlling the active inputs used in a given onstage moment (a console scene; oftentimes one stage scene will involve multiple scene memories on the console).

If there are only a few actors onstage, it will be one VCA per actor; if there is a larger ensemble, often there will be group VCAs, so you might have Male Lead, Female Lead, Supporting Actor 1, Supporting Actor 2, Ensemble. If necessary for the particular song's arrangement, ensemble might break down into men and women, and there might be a VCA for any offstage singers, etc.

By dynamically reassigning the VCAs during the show with the console's automation, you can mix the show primarily just on the DCA faders, while having control over every input you need at any given moment.

Then you just go to the channels to tweak band mix and individual levels (I, for example, tend to make daily adjustments on the input fader for an actor who's in weak voice that night, so that I can still mix the VCAs partially by feel...with a bit of practice on any console, it's easy to hit U blindly, which is an important reference for theatre-sytle line-by-line mixing during rapid sections of dialogue).

On consoles with digital scribble strips it's super-easy, since you can label the DCAs dynamically with the scene, but on Midas consoles (and even on the Yamaha DM2000), you just number the DCAs and then number your script accordingly so you know which actor is on which fader. I'd love for somebody to come up with an affordable add-on scribble strip that you could control off the FOH computer!

Anyway, that's the bare bones of it...there are some little tricks to learn once you get into the intricacies of plotting and programming the DCAs, but I'll save that for the more detailed thing, eh?

--Andy, who realizes he should probably split this off into its own topic, and will do so when it's not 12:30am at night after a 13 hour day at the shop!

 

[JSFox]

Andy, I'd be very curious about your thoughts on the LS9 in general, but in particular it's lack of traditional VCA's and using aux busses as sub alternatives.

 

[Andy_Leviss]

Hmm...I'm a bit wary of commenting on a console I haven't had any flight time on yet, let alone even seeing it in person. Speaking conceptually, I can see it being a good tool for certain things, even certain sizes of projects I work on, but it's certainly not trying to be a bigger console than it's intended to be, if that makes any sense.

If you're doing shows on a scale that they don't need VCAs, then it's probably right on. I can't really speak to aux/groups on it, since I'm not really familiar with its setup.

Yamaha usually takes two different approaches with their consoles. Their studio consoles typically have dedicated aux and group bus outputs. Their live consoles, however, combine both into what they call mix buses (on the early M-series consoles, it was called GA Diversity, for Group/Aux Diversity). Each mix bus can be set to either have a fixed level where each channel is either on or off, sending to that mix either pre-fade (at U) or post-fade (tracking the channel fader), in which case it's acting like a group (with the added ability to have it pre-fade), or with variable level sends, like an aux.

So while it's a different terminology, and you have to wrap your head around choosing between a given bus being an aux or a group, it's no different than any other non-VCA/DCA console as far as having sub-groups goes.

I'm assuming that's what the deal is on the LS9, but again, I haven't even seen one in person or had time to crack the manual, so I'm only speculating based on Yamaha CA's typical topology for their live consoles.

--A

 

[Peter]

Wait... so if the LS9 has these mix buses... does that mean that they cannot be controled / used like aux outputs on 'small' traditional boards with individual control over the level of each channel being sent to the mix?

 

[NeilW]

As Andy said, the LS9 follows the same bus structure as most of the other yamaha consoles. From the LS9 manual:

The sixteen MIX buses provided on the LS9 can be assigned either as VARI or FIXED types in pairs of adjacent odd-numbered/even-numbered buses. They can also be switched between monaural/stereo for the same pairs of buses. VARI type and FIXED type buses differ as follows.

● VARI
This type allows the send level of the signal sent from the input channels to the MIX bus to be varied. The point at which the signal is sent from the input channel to a VARI type MIX bus can be chosen from before the EQ
(attenuator), before the fader, or after the [ON] key. This type is used mainly for sending the signal to a monitor system or external effect.
● FIXED
With this type, the send level of the signal sent from the input channels to the MIX bus is fixed. The signal from an input channel is sent to a FIXED type MIX bus from before Pan (if the MIX bus is monaural) or after Pan (if the MIX bus is stereo). This type is used mainly when you want to distribute signals to an external device with the same mix as the STEREO/MONO buses.

So it is up to the user to configure the console with the bus setup that best suits the needs of the job it is being used for. For monitors, you might choose to have all 16 busses in VARI mode to act as aux sends whilst for FOH, it might be more useful to have 10 busses set up as FIXED for subgroups, and 6 as VARI for aux sends for effects.

It looks like the LS9 editor is now available for download as well from the yamaha site, definately reccomended for understanding more of how the consoles work!

Neil

 

[PhantomD]

I went to a demo for the Yamaha LS9/M7CL tonight.

I was particularly impressed about the price point of the 16-channel version LS9, bringing digital consoles much more in the reach of the masses.

Especially as you can get for $A8000+ in a mixer what it would cost $A20000 to put in a rack - with a much less weight factor too!

Very, very impressed. As a veteran analogue user I was at ease with the console.

I like the idea of user "profiles", where you can just plug in a USB memory stick and it loads your profile of what you're "allowed" to do off there - can even automatically put certain faders up on insertion of the disk.

MP3/MP4/WMA/AAC audio playing capabilities are impressive, although there is a limit of 2GB of memory stick capacity for stable operation. Useful in churches for recording the sermon then putting it on the web minutes later.

Plus I got some merchandise

Features of the software program that can be done at home are very useful - you could preprogram a whole show at home and just bring it in!

 

[Pie4Weebl]

wow this thread makes me realize how out of touch with the sound world I am, I guess in the past few months while at college I have not touched the schools digital board since I am off in light land, and all the mixing I did back in HS was analog.

 

[TOG]

Okay, everybody has had a chance to get over that first glow of New Product and has probably had a chance to work with the LS9. What are your thoughts now?

 

[jglodeklights]

My theater has one. Keep in mind- I am by no means a sound engineer/tech. However, that said, once I got some no pressure time to simply play with it, I picked up the basics of using it by myself (the manual actually makes no sense to me).

The good-
For a non-sound engineer the automatic settings it uses when you patch devices to inputs are useful, as I would otherwise only have a vague idea at best of of where to shelf things.

Extensive level of built in EQ'ing and sound refinements that are easy to access and use.

It is also quite compact and takes up little space, useful useful useful.

Once you learn the interface it really is not all that difficult to access what you want to.

Easy to patch your mixes.

Finally, an APP for your iPad to work with it.

The bad-
Lack of a full analog controls for certain functions. Yes, you can access up to 16 faders for the pots at once, but you can only access one of High, mid, Mid-low, low frequency alteration at a time and for only one of the pots. Can slow things down a little bit.

That's about what my thoughts are.

 

[bishopthomas]

What do you want to know about it? Yamahas are the de facto digital console so if you have guest engineers they'll probably know how to use it. The ability to use a wireless tablet PC is amazing. It's fairly intuitive. The sound is pretty bad. Harsh preamps, unresponsive compressors. We have an LS9-16 and an LS9-32 in inventory and they do the job. We are considering getting something by Soundcraft for kind of a "personal" mixer. We can cross rent the LS9 but we're all getting a little tired of the "Yamaha sound."

 

[TimmyP1955]

It's a very capable console. But with a firmware upgrade, it could be a lot better. Here's my list (that I passed on to the Yamaha training guy):


Multiple Channel Linking fields. One wants some channels to have every parameter linked (such as stereo keyboard pairs), and others to have only the faders linked (so that one does not need to run the drums to a bus and then switch layers in order to be able to turn all the drum channels up or down at once) (Of course one can create a custom fader layer......)

Mixes: Fixed/Variable: Should be selectable individually, not in pairs.

Channel Library! (It's on the O1V96, why not the LS9?)

Channel Move: Any information stored in scenes should move along with it.

Rack Multi-band Dynamics and Multi-band Compressor: Make the auto makeup gain defeatable. Auto makeup gain makes it impossible to safely adjust these units live - especially the one that has individual thresholds - when one adjusts a threshold, the frequency balance changes even if there is no compression occurring!

It should be Dynamics 1 that can be a de-esser, not Dynamics 2 (one wants to de-ess before compressing, not after - I think).

When one un-cues a gate's sidechain, the cue should revert to the channel that was being cued. Instead, it clears the cue.

Either Dynamics unit should be usable as a delay (but if only one, I'd say Dynamics 2, so that a gated drum can be delayed so its time signature matches when it is picked up in the overheads).

Rack Delay MIDI note needs a setting labeled "1:1" so that its obvious which setting makes the delay time equal the time tapped into the user defined tap button. (Many of us have no idea what the little musical notes mean.)

Compression problem: The compression threshold marker has to be well below the displayed maximum signal level before the gain reduction meter shows that there is any compression taking place. (I do not yet know if this is also the case in the detailed view.)

De-esser problem: I've not used de-esser, but others have complained that the threshold setting does not seem to match the signal level required to "hit" the de-esser, and that the de-esser seems to do either too little or too much - never the right amount.