The Yamaha M7CL Digital Mixing Console
By Paul Overson
Have you ever fallen in love with a piece of gear to the point where you would want to marry it? This didn't quite happen (good thing, because it is probably illegal in most states…), but we did love the Yamaha M7CL enough to want to buy it. It is the fastest, most versatile and user-friendly and has the best value of any digital console we've used to date. The Gear
The M7CL comes with either 32 channels or 48 channels, along with four sets of stereo inputs totaling either 40 or 56 channels of input. It also has an exclusive talkback channel that can be assigned to any or all mixes. For output, you have any combination of 16 mix buses, an LCR bus and eight matrix channels–all assignable to 16 omni outputs –as well as eight DCAs. The outputs are expandable via the three mini-YGDAI card slots, meaning that the console is capable of outputting up to 48 mixes. Also, having the ability to output is the noise generator, which outputs fixed tone, pink noise and burst pink noise (great for tuning a system).
Included with the input channels are also two virtual inserts allowing for any combination of compression, gate, compander, deesser and/or limiter. After the virtual inserts come the EQ options, which are extensive. You want a four-band parametric? Done. Your tastes run more toward graphic EQs? You get up to eight 31-bands or 16 Flex-15 EQs. The Flex-15 mode turns the one standard 31-band EQ into two full 31-band EQs with the caveat that you can only use 15 of the sliders. There is a "counter" that keeps track of how many siders have been used. So you can double the number of graphics, you just leave out the sliders for the frequency bands that are set flat anyway. In order to get that many EQs, you have to start giving up effects processors (of which there are four), but having the option just adds to the M7CL's flexibility.
With all this processing, this console is still remarkably quiet. If you max out the input gain, put the faders and masters all up to unity, and you get -127dBu per input, and -80dB for each out. Plus, it has a lot of headroom with a dynamic range of 110dB. It has a pristine sound with its variable sample rate ranging from 44.1KHz to 48KHz, along with only about a 2.7ms of latency.
All these ins and outs are controlled by Yamaha's Centralogic software, which is very user-friendly and quite fast. It is capable of storing up to 300 scenes and allowing changes for everything, including the name of the channel. (Once we used that feature, we had to wonder how we lived without it in the past when it came to running multiple bands on the same console.) Aside from channel names, it even allows for little instrument/vocal icons to be added to the channels, creating a more visual approach to finding your channels. The Centralogic software is controlled by various combinations of push-button rotary encoders, motorized faders, and lastly, a touchscreen (very, very cool).
The console has an onboard power supply, plus it has the ability to run a redundant power supply for a touring situation. Want to talk about small? All these features were crammed into a unit that's 41.7 inches (50.2 inches for the 48 channel) wide by 11.3 inches high by 27.6 inches deep. That's about the same size of a mid-size analog 24-channel console. In terms of weight, it's exceptionally light at only 92.6 lbs (110.2 lbs for the 48).
Last, but not least, these consoles are priced to move. Coming in at about $20,000 for the 32 channel, and about $25,000 for the 48, it's as cheap as getting the analog equivalent with the effects rack. But with the analog console, you still don't get the scene recall. Plus you get to save your back!
The Gig
We received the console, but it had been dropped by the freight company and didn't function properly. We called Randy Weitzel and he immediately put us in touch with Yamaha tech support, who sent us another console. We were treated very well and were taken care of in short order. Yamaha stands behind this product.
The show was a New Year's Eve street party hosting six individual acts and running music and announcements in between. It was cold and had been drizzling all day, making for a slightly more difficult setup. This was the perfect setup to not only test the M7's functionality, but also its durability.
As we were setting up for the show, one enjoyable part of the M7 was how small it was and how easy it was for just one person to move it to the FOH position while not breaking his back. When it came to lifting it up, two of us easily lifted it up on a road case.
Once everything was plugged in, it was easy to start up the console and start tuning the system. It was amazing how easy sound checks went. However, it did take a little longer than an analog console to label the channels and assign the DCAs. We were able to sound check every act very smoothly and save each act into a different scene.
It was very easy to set all of the individual EQ patterns for each channel as well as setting the compression and the gates. The onboard effects worked wonderfully and were very easy to set up and manage.
One thing that was impressive about the M7CL was how much headroom it has. We could run the mix quietly, but were still able to push it into the 110 to 115dB range and maintain a great-sounding mix.
Even in the high humidity and rain, the console ran without any complications. Because it was near freezing, we had set up a space heater near the touch screen. However, even when we turned the heater off, the screen never did get sluggish. Unfortunately, about halfway through the show, the weather took a turn for the worse with heavy rain, hail and lightning. We were forced to shut down the system because of the lightning strikes.
We recommend this console to any company with shows that include acts through B-level bands. Acts that are A-level might have a problem with the fewer number of inputs and on-board effects. It is a no-brainer for theatrical and church installs as well. For our purposes, this is the perfect console for the price.
Thanks to Andrew Pulley and Trevor Young, who contributed to this review.
What it is: A mid-size digital mixing console.
Who it's for: Mid to large sound companies, touring, installs.
Pros: Fast, scene recall, small foot print, touchscreen.
Cons: Too good to be true.
Price: $19,999 MSRP (32-channel), $24,999 MSRP (48-channel).
ISP Technologies GSL12 "Mongoose" Speaker System
By Jamie Rio
I think the biggest challenge a small- or medium-sized sound company (like mine) faces today is how to get the best possible sound and coverage for the most people out of the smallest possible package.
Well, the folks at ISP have taken up this challenge in a big way with a variety of highpowered, high-fidelity, active speaker systems. One of these is the GSL12.
However, before I even get into the review of the GSL12 "Mongoose" powered sound system, I have to mention that you really can't do a live show without some subs to complement these speakers. So, I will be including notes and comments on the ISP XMAX212 subs that I used in all of my live Mongoose shows.
The Gear
The ISP GSL12 Mongoose is an active (self-powered) three-way speaker system that produces buckets of SPL out of two relatively small boxes. The first box contains two vertically-arrayed 12-inch speakers and two amp modules. The amp modules contain two 600-watt lows plus one 300-watt mid and two 100-watt highs. Basically, you've got five channels of amplification and an electronic fourth-order crossover. (If you don't know what fourth order means, look it up! The quick answer is that it means frequencies below the crossover point roll off at 24 dB per octave.)
The second box contains two 12-inch speakers, a high compression midrange horn and two high-frequency drivers. This box stacks on the first box, forming a four-element line (see picture). The second enclosure is not powered, but gets its juice from an eightpole Speakon cable.
All in all, you get 1,700 watts of ISP's patent-pending DCAT high-current-ampli- fication. Stack two of these enclosures on either side of your stage, pony up a couple of ISP subs and you can rock (or hurt) 1,000 to 1,500 people. You can double this to four boxes stacked high plus a couple more subs, and you have a ground-stack line array that is more than eight feet tall and can move 3,000 to 4,000 music-lovin' bodies.
The boxes themselves are built out of Baltic birch and covered in black rubberized polyurethane. They all have the same dimensions: 24 inches wide by 26.25 inches high by 19 inches deep and weigh 115 lbs each. Since you've gotta have subs with these enclosures, I used the ISP XMAX 212s. These are active folded horn subs using 12-inch speakers rather than 15s or 18s and sporting a 1,000-watt DCAT amp per box. ISP claims they will pump out 136 dB of bass at 1 meter, which is more than an average dual 18-inch reflex cabinet driven by 2,000 watts. Anyway, the boxes use Baltic birch construction and are covered by the same black polyurethane that the Mongoose uses. They weigh in at 225 lbs, but have handles and casters and are fairly easy to move around.
A quick word about dB and power specs: They are good for reference and, of course, they can be a strong selling point, but how gear performs in the real world of live audio is not based solely on specs. I guess we all know this. So, let's look at the live shows.
The Gigs
I was anxious to use the ISP gear as soon as I got it, so I took a half stack of the Mongoose (four cabinets) and two XMAX 212 subs to a gig where I was only servicing 500 bodies. I knew it was overkill, but I could always turn it down, right?
The show was at a park in Pasadena, Calif., and I had four ethnic bands performing throughout the day. I had a one-man crew and myself. The two of us had the gear set up in less than an hour, and we were ready for sound check. I turned on the cabinets and immediately blew the park's Edison. I am only mentioning this because you must respect the power requirements of this gear. Twenty amps for two subs and another 20 amps for the four Mongoose boxes, and you will be fine.
Anyway, I started with some programmed music and EQ'd the area. The first thing I heard and felt was the power this little system had. I swear, you would have to use twice as many boxes and double the horsepower (wattage) to get the same sound and air movement out of another system. The sound was also very clean and transparent, which makes the EQ process much easier. We had much more muscle (sound) than we needed so I did turn it down–a little.
My next outing was with the entire GSL12 Mongoose system (eight boxes) and four XMAX 212 subs. This time, I brought a two-man crew and myself to the Hermosa Beach pier in California. It was New Year's Eve and we had an 18-piece swing band on stage. The three of us set the system up in just over an hour and put on some canned Latin jazz. I walked away from the stage to the Pacific Coast Highway (about a quarter mile away) and listened to the mix. It sounded absolutely beautiful. The promoter asked me to bring down the bass because he thought it was a little heavy for swing, so I turned off two of the subs.
At any rate, it had rained heavily all day and didn't stop until about 30 minutes before load-in. The first set began at 8 p.m., and it looked bleak. Only about 250 people showed up. But as the evening wore on, more and more bodies arrived. By midnight, we had about 3,500 partyers including the mayor of Hermosa and his girlfriend. As we rang in the New Year, I wished I had turned the subs back on. The wall of people was absorbing a lot of that low end. However, the highs and mids sailed on flawlessly.
All in all, the Mongoose system is an amazing tool. This sound gear is very wellsuited to small- or mid-sized companies that really need to get the most out of their investment. In fact, I am buying this system instead of sending it back after the review. The boxes would also be right at home in an install situation, such as an auditorium, church or club. ISP is certainly pushing the envelope with regards to size and power. You see, size doesn't always matter.
What is it: Active ground stack line array speaker system.
Who it's for: Sound companies, churches, clubs, schools.
Pros: Powerful, clean, hi-fidelity sound.
Cons: None so far.
How much: $10,500 for two boxes, $21,000 for four boxes MSRP.
Lectrosonics R400A and UH400A
By BrianKlijanowicz
I am a pretty technical guy, and there are very few technologies in the live audio world that I just don't completely "get," but RF is one of them. A console is straightforward –push this fader and increase the output of the channel. Twist this gain knob too far, and the input WILL overload and distortion will be the result. But with RF, it is more like, if you do this thing then the result will be this other thing–unless it is at night, or some unseen something is causing interference or it's a Wednesday. Add to that the fact that, as I have written before, working in Las Vegas can present some pretty serious RF issues. Not too long ago, at a gig for a rock guy who was big in the '80s, his backline crew spent more than an hour trying to find a clear frequency for his less-than-the-latest-model wireless mic. But no one wrote down the golden frequency or bothered to save it in the receiver, so when we lost power to that side of the stage in one of those "hey, it's a live gig!" moments, the number disappeared. With it went any chance of using that wireless for the show. So, given the atmosphere and my experience, anything that makes my wireless life easier is something I want to know about.
The Gear
In the live sound market, most wireless work has long been the domain of mic companies, so many of you may have not heard of Lectrosonics –unless you do a lot of broadcast work, where their stuff is everywhere. The products that were sent to me were the Lectrosonics R400A receiver and the UH400TM transmitter. The whole big deal with Lectrosonics is that they have their own proprietary–"Digital Hybrid Wireless," as they call it–type of wireless encoding. True digital wireless is kind of the Holy Grail of RF. There was a small company called X-Wire that appeared to have it figured out, but they got swallowed up by a big mic company. These days, it seems that the only talk of digital wireless is for boardrooms, and it is more about encrypted communications than sound quality and transmission distance. Except with the Lectrosonic and some other rumored systems we are hearing about that take audio signals that have been digitized, transmit them in analog and then extract the digital audio data from the transmitted analog signal. Don't ask. Just know that it works really well and has major advantages over the industry standard practice of companding (compressing the signal at the transmission end and "expanding" it at the receiver end in order to get all that audio into the narrow bands decreed for this type of use by the FCC).
The UH400TM transmitter is a "plug-on" type of transmitter (you can plug a 58 or some other mic–dynamic or condenser– onto it). It has kind of a "butt plug" deal–stick it onto the end of the microphone and it locks in. It has phantom power built into it selectable from five, 15 and 48 volts. It says on the Web site that it will work in "Native Digital Hybrid Mode" with the Lectrosonic receiver or a number of different ones from other manufacturers, if you're using an analog receiver you already have. No comments, because we never got the chance to test that part of it. They both also have 256 frequencies to work with and the RF output uses a circular isolator to reduce interaction with other transmitters.
The R400A receiver is a standalone piece that is "designed" for Lectrosonics 400 Series transmitters, but can also be used with other analog pieces as well. It has a backlit LCD display that shows the RF level and audio level, both in real time, so you can see dropouts and the like. One of the really cool things I found with this unit is that it will scan through the whole spectrum of freqs that it can operate in (an RF spectrum analyzer!), but it looks like a regular audio spectrum analyzer (so it's easily readable for us audio geeks) and shows you how much RF different freqs have. That way, you can choose the one with the lowest amount of RF interference. Which, as we talked about, comes very handy in Vegas. You could even use it to check right before a show to make sure that a pre-selected freq is clear. It also has "Smart Squelch," "Smart Noise Reduction" and "Smart Diversity," which is all proprietary stuff that takes care of, you guessed it, NR, diversity and squelch issues when used with a 400 series transmitter. It is pretty deep, and if you really want to get in to it, I suggest going here and RTFMing.
The Gig
I tried the gear out at a one-off corporate show at the Aladdin Casino in Las Vegas. About 1,000 people were in attendance as well as the usual RF gumbo to deal with. We used the scanning feature to determine the best freq and dialed it in. The main entertainment was Frank Sinatra, Jr., and when we were done using it as an analyzer, we plugged his Neumann KMS105 into it for the show. It sounded crystal clear and had no dropouts the whole night.
This is a pretty cool piece of gear and worth looking at even if you only use it to map out the clearest frequencies at any given gig.
So, at this point, we thought we were done and were ready to send the gear back to Lectrosonics until they gently (read: without using the word "idiot") informed us that we had not used it for its coolest function. It seems that many sound guys find the output of the R400A so uncolored by any RF companding or noise that they are using it to Smaart a room wirelessly. Yes, you read that right–no need to haul 300 feet of copper around attached to an RTA mic. Just plug the UH400TM into your RTA of choice and the output of the R400A into the front end of your Smaart and feel the freedom. As FOH technical editor Mark Amundson had recently received a box designed to interface with Smaart, we sent the whole Lectrosonics package to him for a look at how the idea works in practice. Take it away, Mark…
"I married the Smaart RTA mic (RTA-420) to the Lectrosonics UH400TM transmitter, and began to set up the bottom selections on the transmitter element. The gain setting was about right, and I left the phantom voltage selection at 48 instead of the18- or 5-volt selections. The power switch is a bit confusing, but I determined quickly that phantom power "on" was the middle selection. A bit different than the off-mute-on switches I am used to on wireless transmitters.
"Once fired up and the receiver on, the whole Lectrosonics 400 mic system was pretty much a unity gain connection without the wire. Using the SmaartLive software, I could not see any wireless artifacts on the various measurement programs. But having the free RTA mic was a joy as I could have an assistant run around the room and check the differences in sound system tuning. No dropouts were noted even as I tried to gyrate the transmitter and get nonoptimal path losses between the Lectrosonics system. The small size and performance of both the transmitter and receiver is a welcome sight for portable sound systems."
What it is: High-end wireless and RF spectrum analyzer.
Who it's for: Anyone with RF coverage issues or who wants to Smaart a room without a wire.
Pros: Very nice locking design, recessed switches on the transmitter, VERY handy and easy-to-use RF spectrum analyzer, sounds very transparent and natural for wireless–enough so that you can use it with an RTA mic.
Cons: Wish there could be some sort of pad or something on the output of the transmitter. When I plugged a 58 and yelled into it and the gain was at around 8 o'clock, it was hitting zero on the input of the receiver. I've worked with some singers who would bury that thing into the ground. A pad would give it more control, which would be nice.
How much: UH400TM transmitter: $1,090, R400A receiver: $800
SIA Smaart I-O Measurement Hardware
By Mark Amundson
For all those potential SmaartLive audio analysis software users who are put off by having to cobble together a computer, RTA mic, mic and line preamps, plus a digital converter, the SIA Smaart I-O hardware kit is for you. While I had no doubt I could purchase the above gear list and make it all work, I did not want to make the investment, and then have to wire up the mess every time I did a gig. And I was hoping that something like Smaart I-O would come to integrate that mess.
The Gear
SIASoft's Smaart I-O is an integrated box that has a USB port for the computer-side of the interface, and three XLR connectors for the audio side of the interface. On the audio side, I get a phantom-powered mic preamp with software-adjustable gain and the ability to toggle the phantom power on or off as desired. Next, I get a full professional line-level input, also with software gain control for patching into a spare mix output to serve as a reference signal source for Smaart software measurement routines. A third audio interface serves as a balanced output source to optionally place test signals into audio systems.
There are no power connections to the Smaart I-O box, which measures about 6.25 by 1.5 by 4.25 inches and weighs less than a pound. The normal USB input connector supplies all the juice needed. As the USB interface is activated, a blue LED illuminates to let you know it is ready for action. In addition to a red LED for phantom power indication on the mic preamp, each preamp has signal and clip LEDs on the buttonless front panel for necessary signal level information. The rear panel on this small, black-painted box is just the USB jack, and the three XLR interface jacks.
Purchasers of the Smaart I-O kit also get a 6-foot USB patch cable, a decent omnidirectional condenser audio measurement mic and a CD of the basic Smaart RTA software that can do a subset of the Smaart Live measurement tasks. These tasks are just the RTA and SPL measurement and display functions, leaving you to upgrade to Smaart Live to get those killer transfer and impulse function measurements for precise system tuning. The RTA-420 mic looks fairly generic with its SIA logo on it, and comes in a small foamed case without a mic clip. When I compared to cheaper and more expensive RTA mics I own, the RTA-420 is very flat and plenty sensitive.
The Gigs
This review is not about the great Smaart Live measurement software, so I am keeping those happy thoughts for another occasion. But by consolidating the digital and analog interfaces in one basic box, and making it fully software-controllable, my prayers have been answered. Loading and using the Smaart I-O and RTA software was a nonevent. And when needed at the gig start, all I had to do was open the Smaart I-O application, set the phantom power on and set the preamp gains; then click off to either Smaart RTA or SmaartLive as desired.
Looking for shortcomings, my only wish would be to make the Smaart I-O software remember my last settings, and not lose them (nonvolatile memory). Also, some further integration with the Smaart measurement software packages to make Smaart I-O a menu item for control, would be better than a separate software application. But I know I am grousing about minor things when I now have a level of hardware integration that is nothing short of XLR connectors on my laptop.
What it is: The missing hardware pieces for Smaart Audio Analysis Software.
Who it's for: Professionals who want a more portable implementation of getting signals digitized for the software.
Pros: High-fidelity preamps, great RTA mic, minimal cabling.
Cons: Minor desire for retention of last settings.
How much: SIASoft Smaart I-O $895 SRP
