tube uk is the first sound rental and live production company in the UK to take delivery of Yamaha’s Rivage PM7 digital mixing system: ‘We’re always excited to be among the first to utilise new technologies and are delighted to be the very first company in the UK with a PM7,’ tube’s Melvyn Coote comments. ‘The console has many excellent features, great quality, a good price point and is underlined by Yamaha’s rock solid reputation for reliability.’
The Rivage PM7 fills a gap in Yamaha’s product range made by the retirement of the PM5D, which was launched in 2004 and has been an enduring a touring industry standard. ‘We always said that when a PM5D replacement hit the market we would buy into it because the history of that product is legendary and we continue to have great results from other Yamaha products’ Coote explains. ‘We believe that the PM7 will prove itself as an equally awesome product.’
Yamaha initially arranged a hands-on demo day for around 60 high-end engineers at Abbey Road Studios in London, where they could use Rivage systems in situ and get a good idea on the functionality and quality on offer. tube and Yamaha subsequently co-presented a similar hands-on workshop session at the impressive concert venue in the Manchester Albert Hall where tube is the resident audio systems provider.
‘All the feedback we were hearing from both of these sessions was extremely positive – so these considerations taken on aggregate added up to it being the right product, right time and right place,’ Coote says.
The tube PM7 has been packaged with an RPio622 I/O stage rack – designed specifically for the Rivage family of digital mixing systems – which is currently loaded with four 16-way input modules, one 16-way output module and a 16-way input/output AES module. Neve Silk input modules provide a choice of two Neve and one Yamaha preamp type on every channel.
‘That’s a great range of quality preamp choices,’ Coote says. The inclusion of the Neves – which recreate the characteristics of Rupert Neve Designs transformer circuitry and acclaimed Silk processing through Yamaha’s VCM digital modelling technology – show that there has been no compromises in quality. ‘The 96kHz, 32-bit processing throughout also makes this a great sounding console.’
Coote also likes the 120 channel count which will service most medium to large productions, together with the 60 mix buses, 24matrices, dual stereo mixes, dual cue buses and processing for up to 192 plug-ins: ‘With this extensive I/O count, it’s been designed to be properly multi-purpose and fit a wide range of audio scenarios.’
The Rivage PM7 and PM10 systems use Yamaha’s new high speed TwinLANe data multicore system to transfer the high data rates between RPio units and the control surface, and can also run a new 144-channel Dante card – which will integrate with tube’s current CL/QL/Rio infrastructure.
tube has purchased numerous Yamaha products over the years, and Coote stresses the ‘incredible reliability’ of the brand is a key factor, and essential for any busy rental and live-sound operation like tube. ‘The PM5D in particular has been absolutely bullet proof, so we’re expecting the same of the PM7,’ he says.
More: www.tubeuk.com
