A Barking Dog

This is my recollection of the second and final day of breakfast and lunch with Yamaha punctuated by using a PM1D. The first day was pretty productive. We learned new things and got a great deal of free time on the console. For this second day we were going to go over the hardware ans setup config as well as get a tutorial of each of the menu panels and after lunch a more indepth look at V2. I’d come to listen to the new mic pre amps and to see what V2 was all about. And also for the free food.

I was looking forward to the hardware portion, though in hindsight it could be folded into the feature portion from the first day to save time. On the gigs I’ve done with a PM1D there has always been a tech that set it up and helped me program. I figured I should know how it goes together just in case I turn up at a gig to find a pile of parts and no guy or if the guy abandons ship prior to the gig. Once you see the topology it’s pretty easy and more advanced configs are available like mirrored consoles, consoles sharing input devices and DSP engines and consoles sharing input device with separate DSP and scenes. They also went over a bit of the troubleshooting procedure and what to be able to provide when you call Yamaha for support. One neat thing was 24/7 emergency support if your console tanks late at night at a gig and an applications support line open during the week for general operational questions. I thought that was pretty cool that during the week you can call and ask them how to do something relevant to your app if you can’t figure it out.

Of the questions I had one was regarding the use of fiber for longer distances. There is a box called the Artist 1D that Yamaha commissioned from Riedel to add fiber capability to the PM1D. It’s 80 channels each direction and integrates pretty easily into the system. The trainers didn’t seem to know too much about it in detail and I would suspect not that many have been deployed in the field. For example no one knew of any portable apps using this piece or how the connector configs were deployed though one of the theaters that had a person in the class had one deployed though he did not know the specifics of how it worked. When I asked about the connector specifics the marketing guy replied that they were “mil spec” connectors. Well, OK but what format? “Mil spec” again was the answer. That’s not a format, that’s a buzz word. When I asked if it was single or multimode fiber a similar confusion ensued, with one person saying yes you could operate the snake both ways. Persons that work with fiber, and this will become more and more common in our little world, need to be familiar with the various connector types as well as the difference between multimode and single mode fiber. The Riedel comes with LC fiber connectors (and operates on multimode fiber) but in a portable app LCs aren’t something you’d like to haul around. They aren’t made for repeated portable connections in harsh environments. You’d likely have to come off to a Stratos or other type of rugged use connection which would add a non trival amount to the cost. That’s one area where I think Neutrik or Whirlwind could clean up is a lower cost, robust fiber connector for portable applications. Whilrwind has a fiber conenctor though I’m not sure of the pricing. Whirlwind is making a mult specific to the copper based PM1D config taking the SCSI type D connectors that connect the engines and frames to a circular mult, a la W3 though it’s not listed on the Whirlwind site.

Next up was the software overview portion where we stepped through every menu on the surface. While the overview was handy I think that doing it on the first day would have been more appropriate as we had already covered most of the options the day before in the excercise. Still though, it was good to get a walk through. One thing that I hadn’t fully understood prior was how the various panning modes operateded. This is a pretty critical thing when doing discrete ear mixes. Some players want either different spacing of panning or completely different, aysemetrical pans when compared to the other players. It’s something my first couple of times on the console I stumbled on as the techs weren’t used to doing ears and in one case, the tech didn’t have a grasp on speaking english. The three modes are linking the mix bus pans to the L+R pans, linking all pans for that particular mix bus, separate from the L+R pans or individual mode where all pans operate independently. It’s not very obvious and if you don’t know about it or have a tech that knows about it you will spend some time trying to figure it out, if you are able to at all. One thing I’d like to see in fader flip mode is that when the pan is set to individual, the pan on the strip on the surface becomes the mix bus pan. The way it is now, you have to SEL the input and set the mix bus pans which is a bit more time consuming. A button to center the pan would be a nice addition as well.

After another fine lunch we were able to get a demo of the new FX and dynamics plug ins. They pretty much knocked off 1176s and 160xs as well as a Pultec eq and tape saturation device. They sound pretty good, better than stock dynamics units but that’s the whole point, selling esoteric plugins as part of the upgrade. While the new plug ins are part of the V2 upgrade, I wish Yamaha would go the extra distance and either open up the API to third party developers of TDM or VST plugins or develop a stand alone plugin engine that interfaced with the system. I suppose one could do something like Plugzilla and interface via a DIO frame but I think it would be more advantageous, not to mention user friendly to incorporate it into the system. We were able to finish off the day with another couple of hours of lab time with the system but I had already completed my list of things I wanted to do and thought I’d get an early start dealing with the traffic back to Vegas. Prior to that I shared some of my PM5D settings on the demo piece in the lab as it didn’t have any scenes populated. I had several configs of the mon gig I’ve been doing this year as well as an FOH gig I did last year. At the completion of the class, we were issued surveys of the class which we filled out and returned in exchange for a bag o’ swag that included a PM1D branded hat, nice polo shirt, certificate of completion and Yamaha Commerical Audio branded mini mag light. Not a bad haul.

This was a very informative couple of days and I can’t recommend it enough. My hosts were hospitable, informative and entertaining. The one thing that did stand out in my mind is how the PM1D went from industry leader on the release, to also run, long in the tooth status. While certainly functional and useable the product has slipped in the last couple of years and the latest upgrade adds enough functionality so that other products (including the PM5D) don’t relegate it to museum status. Some of the new features, like the gain compensation feature for shared preamps is pretty limiting in that only one surface has direct control of the preamp. That falls short of some of the other solutions where both surfaces can control the preamp with the compensation happening bi directionaly. That’s just one example of my point that the PM1D is closer to end of life than Yamaha would like us to believe. I think within the next year or two I’d expect something to take its place. With the interface of the M7CL (more on that surface in another post) I think we are getting a peek at the future of what Yamaha has in store for the surface market. As long as the dev cycles aren’t too long it’s a pretty good bet the Yamaha will still retain the market lead in the deployment of pro level control surfaces.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 13th, 2005 at 8:44 pm and is filed under Barking Dog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.