Yamaha O2R

drankin

Member
We have this new console. I have a student designer learning it for our upcoming musical. She says there are only 99 scene memories. Can this be true? Our first act has over 70 cues. Thank you.
 
I have the 01v96v2 which has only 99 scene memories ... considering the 02r is an older model that does not surprise me. The 01v96 series is a studio recording board, not designed for live performance (like the LS9 or above)
 
The O2R is far from a "new" console... its about as ancient as it gets in digital consoles. I want to say that console was new in 2002? If you can get it to connect to studio manager from Yamaha, you can use that the load in more cues. I can't remember if that desk will even connect to studio manager.
 
I can see using fader groups in a rudimentary way to get DCA functionality, in which case you can probably end up with a couple hundred snapshots in a two act musical.
 
We have this new console. I have a student designer learning it for our upcoming musical. She says there are only 99 scene memories. Can this be true? Our first act has over 70 cues. Thank you.

As already mentioned you have fader groups. There are also mute groups. As per a query in the thread, yes it works with Studio Manager.

Andre
 
I can see using fader groups in a rudimentary way to get DCA functionality, in which case you can probably end up with a couple hundred snapshots in a two act musical.

You have to temper demands to the gear you're working with - with an 02R you're stuck with 4 fader groups. It's been a few years since I've mixed on one, but you ended up mixing a musical more like you would on an analog desk - your hands are everywhere, and you need to be quick to hit all your pickups. There's a little more slop in the mix as some things end up being up too long, but better than coming up too late. For me the 4 groups do their best when used for Male/Female Chorus, and Band/Drums or Band/FX groupings. You punch people out of the Chorus groups when they have an individual lines you need to get. I can ALMOST get needing more scenes than normal with the 8 Fader groups on the 02R-96, but I've done a few dozen musicals on the M7 with 8 proper DCA's and the scene memory doesn't get too high usually.

I get that not all shows are equal, but even if the desk had full scene scoping of every parameter, a few hundred cues is a bit excessive 95% of the time. Sure, I'll have more cues on a desk with 8 DCA's vs 12 and I'm not trying to argue that there is some hard-and-fast rule on an absolute cue number you have to stay under but if you had 200 cues in a 120 minute show, you're hitting GO a little over every 30 seconds - that's a lot! At what point do you acknowledge the show is over-cued and you need to just sit back and mix the show in a different manner? The shows I've done that had cues into the hundreds did so because the shows were simultaneously huge cast, had very fast dialogue, and had many sound effects.

I can buy 100-120 cues in a 20+ cast 2+ hour musical where you're triggering DCA changes, delay changes, and SFX but the 02R has 16 mic inputs, there is most definitely a point at which you are over-cueing that show when with just a little more effort, the show could be mixed right on the input faders.

Can you be more specific?
I'm asking if you're using scene memory to physically change the position of the faders song-by-song in your musical. Typically in a musical someone is actively mixing the show with their hands, and you use scene memory to change assigns, mutes, EQ's, etc. Every now and again I'll use scene memory to change band levels to the master band fader under my hands on a per-song basis, but never with actor vocals.
 
This musical has 10 body mics, 2 PCCs, 1 Pzm and one orchestra feed. We want to use the memory almost exclusively to change fader levels every time those with body mics enter or exit. Thoughts?

With only ten packs, I personally feel like you're doing it wrong. I would be manually muting and un-muting and only change cues if actors switch mics and need different eq or effect settings. I regularly run a nine mic set up this way and myself and a my students rarely have issues.
 
Ride the faders. You want to mix with your ears, not with your memories. Aside from the complexity of recording that many scenes and maintaining the scenes throughout the production process as things change and need to be updated, you want to mix every show based on that night's performance. A room full of people absorbs more sound than a room full of empty chairs. The crowd noise will be different every night for applause and such, and performers will project at different volumes from night to night.

To deliver the best experience to your audience and connect them with their performers, I highly recommend following along in a script and riding faders with your ears over recording scenes.
 
With only ten packs, I personally feel like you're doing it wrong. I would be manually muting and un-muting and only change cues if actors switch mics and need different eq or effect settings. I regularly run a nine mic set up this way and myself and a my students rarely have issues.
Like he wrote. What you can do to simplify live operation is have board scenes setup to match the active channels up on the faders so that only the currently active faders are up, providing a visual guide as which channels to focus on in each French scene. This helps considerably in knowing which channels to focus on.

You can also include the approximate levels in each scene also, simplifying somewhat the level matching. Of course this still reverts to "combat audio" when the performers change delivery or say wrong lines.

Enjoy!

Andre
 
DRankin, the consensus is right here. Use scenes for the big changes; use faders and mute buttons for basic dialog switches and mixing. Scenes are a two-edged sword, and the Yamaha scene workflow doesn't support enough inheritance and granularity to manage updating multiple cues.

If you have more than a few scenes, you're probably doing it wrong.
 
DRankin, the consensus is right here. Use scenes for the big changes; use faders and mute buttons for basic dialog switches and mixing. Scenes are a two-edged sword, and the Yamaha scene workflow doesn't support enough inheritance and granularity to manage updating multiple cues.

If you have more than a few scenes, you're probably doing it wrong.

I appreciate everybody's advice. The issue is our sound designer is the only student with any sound experience. She will be running the show through rehearsals and for the first performance, but will then miss two performances and be there for the final performance. Our sound crew who will be filling in for her will not be there Until tech week and would only have about one rehearsal to learn the show. The director is adamant about having all Mike's live one second before they are needed and completely shut off if any actor leaves the stage. To complicate matters, the orchestra is in a different room and will be mixed live. The house has only 140 seats and the variables are fairly predictable.
 
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I appreciate everybody's advice. The issue is our sound designer is the only student with any sound experience. She will be running the show through rehearsals and for the first performance, but will then miss two performances and be there for the final performance. Our sound crew who will be filling in for her will not be there Until tech week and would only have about one rehearsal to learn the show. The director is adamant about having all Mike's live one second before they are needed and completely shut off if any actor leaves the stage. To complicate matters, the orchestra is in a different room and will be mixed live. The house has only 140 seats and the variables are fairly predictable.
Well, unfortunately not everything can be as simple as next, next, next. Hopefully your director will be understanding.
 
Additionally, only having one person capable of being the slider jockey is a bad position for a school. Get whomever is filling in to start working with the designer right away. I work in a high school and have put brand new board ops on more shows that I can count. It happens. That's the key part of educational theater. The education!
 
I appreciate everybody's advice. The issue is our sound designer is the only student with any sound experience. She will be running the show through rehearsals and for the first performance, but will then miss two performances and be there for the final performance. Our sound crew who will be filling in for her will not be there Until tech week and would only have about one rehearsal to learn the show. The director is adamant about having all Mike's live one second before they are needed and completely shut off if any actor leaves the stage. To complicate matters, the orchestra is in a different room and will be mixed live.

Then let the designer design, and get someone on the sound crew to learn how to mix. In a typical theater setup with full staff, the designer is there to gauge the overall sound and shape that, and a separate set of ears is mixing and making the designers notes a reality. You gain two people who then know how sound works out of this.

As far as having mics up one second before an actor speakers - even that is super generous. When you're truly riding faders on a show the fader is up a hair before the actor speakers, and down a hair after they finish.

As for the orchestra in a different room - that's actually to your benefit. You may have to trunk some video lines in so the cast can stay in tempo with the MD as they conduct, but now you can fully shape the sound of the orchestra without fighting their natural sound in the room against the vocals. When I design musicals I generally have a master band DCA and the band will mix themselves so-to-speak - I let the MD do the bulk of the work forming the bands sound, and I just ride general band loudness through the PA with the band DCA. Every now and again you ride a solo alone, but the band is best off just being a band and you ride the band into and against the vocal levels desired.
 
Use cues for entrances, and do exits manually. If that's not enough, I don't know. We've had over 99 cues per show only twice IIRC.
 

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