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Author Topic: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?  (Read 106322 times)

Peter Morris

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #30 on: December 30, 2012, 04:40:15 AM »

To me this raises the question of "how are you mixing?"  Are you running things generally hot (high levels) or cold? 

The DSP comments you make are interesting, but I'm not sure they apply.  Yamaha tends to hard-assign DSP resources, so using a big reverb can't steal DSP from some other process.

There are two issues here – the quality of the signal chain without effects, and the quality of the effects. To my ears, the M7 does poorly on both accounts.
AB an SPX2000 with the same reverb in the M7 …. The SPX sounds great; the M7 not so good.

In terms of DSP power an iLive will do 8 effects + 32 full GEQs at the same time. It has 64 (128 with 2 racks) mic inputs + 8 stereo returns … etc. etc. an M7 doesn’t come close; to make it usable the M7 has to trade effects for EQs and even resort to only allowing 15 of the 31 GEQ bands to be used if you need 16 GEQ’s … in fact I think an  X32 does better (?)
 
To be fair to Yamaha, the M7 was one of the first reliable, usable and affordable digital desks, and they are still acceptable.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2012, 04:42:54 AM by Peter Morris »
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Tim Padrick

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #31 on: December 30, 2012, 05:35:12 AM »

If it's audible, it's measurable.

IF you have a sufficiently complex test signal.  Few do.
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Keith Broughton

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #32 on: December 30, 2012, 06:35:33 AM »

Quote
As for me, I've done quite a few shows in good-sounding concert halls with Meyer speakers, my choice of microphones (or the boutique mics brought by the artist), and great players... on Yamaha LS9 mixers.  I can't recall any complaints about the console sounding bad from anybody involved.
I have done the same and not one paying customer complained.
However, I did the same touring show with the same mics, players, rooms and PAs on a Midas pro 2 and all I can say is the "sound quality, to me" was noticeably better. It was a greater pleasure to mix the show.
Something is different and it's not that the price of the console was a lot higher.
Comparing analogue to digital consoles, on "sound quality" alone is not exactly fair. The size to feature ratio of digital is much better and sometimes "sound quality" is not the only driving factor of console choice.

So here is a thought....
In the end, if the people buying the tickets are happy, should we be worried about what is the best "sound quality" or be more concerned with a cost effective production?
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Frederik Rosenkjær

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #33 on: December 30, 2012, 08:57:44 AM »

I am not fond of any of the effects, especially the reverbs and EQ’s.

The EQs are standard minimum phase designs, meaning they are the same as a lot of fancy expensive EQs out there that have been praised by many an accomplished mix engineer until they turn out to be a regular digital minimum phase design in a fancy user interface.

Morale: There's nothing wrong with them.


To my ears again - the best sounding desks are Digico and Midas, then you get the PM5Ds, Profiles and Allen Heath (yes, AH sounds good) and maybe even the X32!... below that is the M7, LS9 and Presonus.


The PM5D has the same EQs, comps and effects as the M7 and LS9. Only difference sound wise are the pres and converters.

What I notice with an M7 is when you start to sum lots of channels and use a lot of the DSP power it sounds the worst.

As others have already mentioned, the DSP usage in Yamaha consoles is constant. And summing is completely linear math. No magic there. No reason why it would sound different summing many sources apart from some miniscule rounding errors which, to my knowledge, no one has so far succeeded in demonstrating makes any discernable difference in real world scenarios.


Then there are the firmware algorithms which control the quality of the GEQs, Comps, reverbs etc. Better effects generally require more DSP power and the M7 comparatively doesn’t have much.

How do you know this? That the M7 doesn't have much DSP power?
And I believe I've covered the bit about the EQs.
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Steve Payne

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #34 on: December 30, 2012, 08:57:56 AM »

So here is a thought....
In the end, if the people buying the tickets are happy, should we be worried about what is the best "sound quality" or be more concerned with a cost effective production?

Depends on if you jump out of bed every morning because you love your job, or if you drag your ass out of bed to go to work because you need the pay check.
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Scott Helmke

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #35 on: December 30, 2012, 09:36:35 AM »

However, I did the same touring show with the same mics, players, rooms and PAs on a Midas pro 2 and all I can say is the "sound quality, to me" was noticeably better.

So the obvious thing would be to compare the two show files - any differences in EQ on various channels, any differences in mix levels, etc?

EQ knob values being some what suspect, maybe eventually a SMAART test to verify EQ settings.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2012, 10:28:43 AM by Scott Helmke (Scodiddly) »
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Frederik Rosenkjær

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #36 on: December 30, 2012, 10:21:07 AM »

I have done the same and not one paying customer complained.
However, I did the same touring show with the same mics, players, rooms and PAs on a Midas pro 2 and all I can say is the "sound quality, to me" was noticeably better. It was a greater pleasure to mix the show.
Something is different and it's not that the price of the console was a lot higher.

I've had several sets of different gigs in the same room, same band, same everything including the console and some gigs were better and easier to mix than others....there are other parameters.
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Affiliations: Danley Sound Labs, Yamaha (MI)

Frederik Rosenkjær

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #37 on: December 30, 2012, 10:51:12 AM »

this tread may be of interest ....

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/high-end/776547-yamaha-cl5-processing.html

That thread is very interesting, because it shows us how little forums posts can sometimes be trusted. This guy is certain that he's hearing this profound difference between mix engines..... Total BS. Sorry, but that's my opinion. This guy is listening with everything but his ears.

"..and thanks for the info, it had to be fixed point really..." ......puuhleeaze...
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Jim McKeveny

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #38 on: December 30, 2012, 11:33:22 AM »

To further clarify:

When adding DCA controlled inputs to to the Stereo mix... 
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Frederik Rosenkjær

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Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #39 on: December 30, 2012, 11:40:32 AM »

To further clarify:

When adding DCA controlled inputs to to the Stereo mix...

But the point is it makes no difference to the audio path at all, whether a channel is assigned to 0, 1 or 16 DCAs...
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Affiliations: Danley Sound Labs, Yamaha (MI)

ProSoundWeb Community

Re: Why no love for the 'sound' of Yamaha digital consoles?
« Reply #39 on: December 30, 2012, 11:40:32 AM »


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