With Yamaha’s flagship Rivage PM10 digital mixing console finding favour through the 2016 festival season, the Festival de Radio France used a PM10 to mix two weeks of wide-ranging jazz performances.

Taking place in Montpellier, Festival de Radio France features many different styles of music in venues throughout Montpellier. The 1,800-seat open air Amphithéâtre du Domaine d’O – managed by the city’s Department of Art and Culture – was the venue for the festival’s jazz programme, with all performances broadcast live on radio station France Musique.

Bruno Lompech, Radio France’s PA service manager, was in charge of the site’s audio system and specified the Rivage PM10 for the FOH mix: ‘Here in Radio France’s Department of External Operations, we had been looking forward to using the console and this was an excellent opportunity to test its sound quality and ergonomic qualities in the difficult environment of an open-air amphitheatre,’ he says.

All audio inputs for the shows were managed by the console’s RPio622 I/O rack. This split the signals, sending separate feeds to a Yamaha CL3 digital console on monitors and to the Radio France OB van via Madi, once converted by a RMio64-D Dante/Madi unit. The monitor mixes were output from the CL3 via a Rio3224-D I/O unit.

Engineer Matthew Leroy mixed the shows on the Rivage PM10 – and was impressed: ‘Like all Yamaha consoles, it is intuitive, straightforward to use and you have that reassurance that it won’t let you down,’ he says. ‘It is like a luxury car – there are many facilities, but you can also use it in a very straightforward way.

‘In the past, I have used consoles where you need to rely on plug-ins to get a good sound, or where I have needed to have my eyes fixed on the screens. But the quality of the Rivage PM10 Hybrid preamps, its integrated processing and ease of use mean that you can concentrate exclusively on the most important thing – the sound.’

More: www.yamahaproaudio.com