Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Feb 4, 2008 23:19:09 GMT 1
OK. Here are a couple of snaps for you. I recently worked at the CCIB in Barcelona and had to use the house rig. It is Martin WL8 rig with a PM1D on the front end. The curious thing is, because of the horribly reflective surfaces (stone and glass walls, with a metal ceiling) they have come up with an unusual solution to try and calm all the reflections. Barn doors! You can't really see them on the picture but I promise that all except the lower four boxes in each hang have barn doors of about half a metre square on each side. Using the PM1D was quite an experience too. 48 mixes and 24 matrix sends for 96 inputs.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Jun 12, 2007 14:26:57 GMT 1
It was a distributed d&b E9/E3 system with Turdo Impact 50's as front fills. The M7CL was providing all delay, EQ and processing. My techie dweeb side was hoping that someone would notice that I was using Smaart, but there you go.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Jun 11, 2007 16:56:53 GMT 1
Be very good little Sound Engineers or you will end up being bored to death at the back of a conference (in Italian) in Milan. Actually I am quite proud to be still doing it at 51. I have never surrendered to the lure of a cushy desk job. A career spanning Rock and Roll, West End Musicals and endless conferences is a fine one by my lights. I could do with a bit more music in my life 'though.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Smaart
Mar 21, 2008 16:03:16 GMT 1
Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 21, 2008 16:03:16 GMT 1
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
|
Smaart
Mar 21, 2008 15:29:06 GMT 1
Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 21, 2008 15:29:06 GMT 1
You are a wise man. Mr. Ryder! According to all the blurb from EAW they have done quite a few updates to 6. If only I could get it to run I would let you know. Forgive my ignorance Herr Biscuit, but what is an ICT Pro? In answer to Soundmanjim, Protools LE, Sound Forge 9 and Sony Acid Music Studio 7 all run on my Vista machine. I am told that the (insert your own expletive) people who wrote Vista did not talk to the division of Microsoft that deals with DirectX and decided to have only DirectX 10 and above with no backwards compatibility. Most sound stuff is not yet written to work above 9. It sounds stupid enough to be true.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
|
Smaart
Mar 17, 2008 16:22:50 GMT 1
Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 17, 2008 16:22:50 GMT 1
Does anyone out there use Smaart? I have just got a new laptop, a Toshiba Satellite U300 13v, 2.4 Ghz Centrino duo with 4GB ram, running Vista Home premium. For the life of me I cannot get Smaart 6 to run. I have turned off Windows defender and the User account control but all to no avail. Also the Yamaha DME network stuff for connecting to Yamaha digital desks is unstable. I have had to bring my old, steam driven, Sony which runs XP back out of retirement. It runs perfectly and seems to run faster anyway. I have asked the people at EAW but they are not getting back to me. Any clues gratefully received.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Sept 24, 2007 12:54:31 GMT 1
As a slightly different approach you could try a Rode NT3? www.turnkey.co.uk/web/productAction.do?dispatch=showProduct&SKU=RODE-NT3&context=WEB I have used them with success on voice over work. They are hyper cardioid, so your artist needs to bear that in mind. I would use a second pop shield on top of the first as they are little prone to popping. Not sure how well it would survive on the road, the manufacturer says it is tough, but then they would, wouldn't they?
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Jun 12, 2007 14:40:34 GMT 1
Also the MP3 record/replay from a USB key is a good feature. You can use the "User defined" buttons to play them, if you want. You could record the band and flog the recording at the end of the show! Easier to do than making CD's.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Jun 12, 2007 14:37:34 GMT 1
With regards to the LS 9 preamps look at that bit I posted in The Wharehouse. Treat them much more gently than an analogue desk and they are fine. Keep it in the green not the orange. You have to rethink how you use gain structure and find the gain everywhere, not just at the beginning. Don't get the 16, however. It is more difficult to use because of the the restricted number of channels and simply does not have enough outputs to be useful. 8 IN TOTAL! That is a bit rubbish really. Apart from that, not bad for a budget desk. As previously mentioned, the M7CL is a much better desk.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Jul 3, 2007 11:09:28 GMT 1
If you go to the Manley Voxbox website they do a sort of guide to what the knobs do in the manual which I found useful. If you ever have the chance to get hold of one sell your granny to do it. They are utterly fabulous!
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Mar 10, 2007 14:57:47 GMT 1
Try creating a cardioid sub array with the back of the subs facing the problem punters house. You need a minimum of three subs driven by seperate amp channels and a delay line. Place the subs in a line one behind the other, all facing forwards. place them so that the fronts are exactly a metre apart. It looks really wrong because the front of one sub is facing the back of the next one. Delay the middle and front sub to the rear one. This is easiest to do by dialling it in using the metres setting rather than milliseconds on the delay line, one metre for the middle sub and two metres for the front sub. You will get +6db out of the front and better than -20db out of the back. You can use more than three subs if you have more amp channels and delay taps, but three is the minimum. The people at Meyer sound have been doing it for a while. It is proper sound voodoo, but is perfect for tent gigs. Whilst you are mucking about with delays try delaying the entire system to the back line/drums it tightens the sound of everything wonderfully! If you think about it, if for example the stage is 20 feet deep, when the bass player, guitarist, drummer hits a note or drum the sound comes out of the cabinet and the sound system at the same time and there is therefore a twenty millisecond(ish) delay between the two sounds. If you delay the sound system to the back line by that twenty milliseconds you will get a much more coherent sound which is also easier to mix because you are not fighting that delay. Try it, let me know what you think.
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Jul 27, 2007 12:01:17 GMT 1
Another Yamaha snippet for you. Try using EQ 2, rather than the default of EQ 1. I find it sounds much sweeter. Also Yamaha themselves recommend using it. Which leaves me wondering why they would set EQ 1 as the default???
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on Jun 19, 2007 8:26:35 GMT 1
Another thing or two about these desks. If you want to use the help function you have to go here www.yamahaproaudio.com/downloads/firm_soft/index.html and download the relevant help file to a USB key, then when you stick the key in the desk load the .xml file (M7CL or LS9) The help button will then work, but the desk forgets it as soon as you turn the desk off again. The help is fairly clunky 'though. I have found the "Quick start guides" from here www.yamahaproaudio.com/downloads/documents/index.html#m7cl much more useful. Also to get mp3's to play on an LS9 first put a usb key in the desk. The desk will create a file called YPE on it, take the key out and shove it in your laptop. In the YPE file is another one called Songs, put your mp3's in there and the desk can find them. (Took me ages to figure that one out).
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on May 31, 2007 14:56:05 GMT 1
Bugger! Wasted my time then....
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Rick Sarson
Senior Engineer
In search of fidelity
Posts: 106
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Post by Rick Sarson on May 8, 2007 18:19:56 GMT 1
Please don't think I am doing an egg sucking course. But here are a few things I have found out about Yamaha digital desks that might help. My first experience was on a PM5D. It was a nightmare! It turned out that the desk had been used as a sub desk on its previous job, so nothing on the control surface worked and no sound would come out! The tip is that if you turn the desk off, press and hold the scene store button next to the screen and power up again the opportunity to reset to factory default comes up. I do this with every desk now as there is no way of telling what the previous user has been getting up to and it means that good things happen like socket one corresponding to input one and also with fader one. I can't remember how to access this function is on an M7CL, but on an LS9 it is press and hold the top left button by the screen until it has gone through the boot up sequence. On a PM5D if you press and hold a mix select button and a channel select button for a few seconds it will ask if you want to create a "mix minus" for that channel. Say yes and all other channels (except the one were holding) are sent to that mix at zero. On an LS9 if you trying to use a graphic inserted on a group for feedback supression, say on a lectern, if you select one of the lectern mic channels before you go to the graphic rack then the head amp knob still controls that channel after all the faders represent the sliders on the graphic. If you are thinking of buying an M7CL then you might like to know that Yamaha do an expansion card (£200-ish) that gives you direct access to the matrix outputs. This makes the desk much more flexible on a big show as it is all too easy to use up 16 outputs. I would guess they would do the same for an LS9, especially the 16 as it only has a total of eight outs, which disappear very quickly on all but the smallest jobs. Something that makes life much easier on both the M7 and the LS9 is if you name all the mixes in Studio Manager before you load up your show. Especially on the M7 as the names come upon the 'fader job' screen and it so much easier just to read the soft button rather than trying to remember what you did with mix 15 or whatever. If you want to get into using the Yamaha DME network to work with these desks it is worth noting that all Yamaha digital desks come out of the factory with the same IP address. If you were using an M7 yesterday and an LS9 today you will have to change the address on the desk or your laptop will think it is still the M7. Let me know if any of this has been helpful, because it took ages to type!
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