Gareth Fry
Sound Design for Theatre
Yamaha have been years ahead of most companies with digital desks, and have a range of small- and large-format desks. All the desks have a large number of inputs and outputs, the bottom of the range 01v96 for example is easily expandable to 40 inputs and 18 outputs. The desk software is rock-solid and is controllable from sophisticated computer-based software. Expansion cards on all models allow extra inputs, outputs in a variety of formats: analogue, ADAT, MADI, etc.
- Yamaha 01v96 - small but very powerful
Product | Manual
- Yamaha M7CL - larger-scale, and currently the most common digital desk in use due to it’s combination of featues to low price.
Product | Manual
- Yamaha PM5D
Product | Manual
(c) Gareth Fry 2009
Digital Mixers
Digital mixing desks are becoming increasingly popular for a number of applications. For DSM-operated shows complex sequences can be executed reliably and repeatedly at the push of a button. For other shows the cost and space occupied by a digital desk is often considerably less than its analogue counterpart.
Small-format digital desks are commonly seen on ASM/DSM operated shows, or as a sub-mixer on a musical.
Large-format desks are popular as a main mixer for musicals because they take up less seats than an analogue equivalent. All desks feature full MIDI automation, motorised faders, compressors on every channel, internal reverb/effects units as standard and are expandable.