Yamaha Corporation has manufactured professional audio products for over 35 years and this year marks the 20th anniversary of digital console manufacturing with over 3,000 PM digital consoles sold to date.
“Yamaha is a company with amazing resources and a huge talent pool of brilliant engineers,” states Larry Italia, vice president/general manager, Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Inc. “With a range and depth of capabilities to engineer and manufacture products across the board, the company maintains a strong commitment to the digital console market and has made serious inroads with the convenience of recall, built-in signal processing, on-board effects, and reasonable costs which have led engineers to move into the digital realm.”
The strong acceptance of the Yamaha PM1D opened the door for mid-size installations and sound companies to take advantage of the PM5D console. The PM5D utilizes renowned PM5000 mic preamps, a clean digital signal path offers superior sound, and since the consistent operating system is simple and reliable, users of other Yamaha digital consoles see the familiarity right away. The strong customer commitment to the PM1D and PM5D has led to the popularity of the new M7CL, LS9, DM2000VCM, and 02R96V2 digital consoles having many of the same features and available at a much lower price.
“The 5D is pretty easy to navigate since there is a similar architecture native to Yamaha digital consoles,” states independent engineer Rick Reith who recently used the PM5D during the Country Music Association Festival (CMA) in Nashville. “The fact that you have extensive EQ, dynamics and effects at your fingertips allows you to focus more on the mix, and now with the addition of the add on effects package in Version 2 software, there’s even more control.”
With so many PM5Ds in the field, there were many requests from end users to allow for more inputs and hence, the company developed the Yamaha DSP5D and Version 2 software for the PM5D to enhance the operability of the console. The Yamaha DSP5D is a stand-alone unit that expands the capabilities of the console to 96 mono plus 16 stereo input channels, includes two additional card slots, with more effects and dynamics processing, and can be used with a PC and Yamaha Studio Manager software. PM5D Version 2 features include virtual soundcheck which allows for an easy switch between live inputs and inputs from a multi-track recorder. New features also include effect library programs: De-Essor, add-on VCM (virtual circuitry modeling) effects now built-in such as analog modeled compressors and EQs (Comp 276, Comp260, EQ601), and OpenDeck tape simulation. Effects can be used as additional 31-band GEQs, and all GEQs can be switched to PEQs. The channel move feature allows channels to be moved for layout reorganization.
“As we celebrate our 20th year manufacturing digital consoles, we continue to listen to our customers for ideas on improving products and for future product development,” Italia continues. “We are grateful for the huge acceptance of our digital consoles and vow to continue to lead the market with yet more, exciting products in the near future.”