Mix Live Blog: A Tale of Two Consoles

As is usually the case in my touring adventures, I mixed on a variety of consoles last week, but two in particular fell on opposite ends of the “user-friendly” spectrum.

Falling squarely into the category of “I can’t believe I’m doing a show on this desk because it’s so old” was the Yamaha PM5D I used at the St. George Theater in Staten Island, N.Y. Not a RIVAGE PM5, but a PM5D, which, for the uninitiated, was the second generation of digital consoles designed for live sound manufactured by Yamaha (first gen was the PM1D). The PM5D is around 20 years old and I haven’t seen one since… hmmm… the last time I worked at the St. George!

This time around it was a show with Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks (“Yes Epics, Classics & More Tour”), with special guest “Welcome Back: The Return of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer” (see my previous blog for more info). I haven’t mixed this show on a PM5D, don’t have a console file for it and knew I wouldn’t have time to build one on-site day of show, so I figured I’d use Yamaha Studio Manager, the offline editor for the PM5D. I’ve used Studio Manager many times in the past to build show files, but it’s been a little while now.

Off I went on my journey to use the software, which is (amazingly) still available for download from the Yamaha website(!). In fact, there are several versions of the software available; the problem for me was finding a Mac with an OS old enough to run it. Yikes. No such luck with that, but Yamaha also still has a download for the Windows version. I downloaded it and installed it on my Mac, which runs Windows under Boot Camp.

Now for you young-uns, here’s a trip into the Way Back machine.

The PM5D was pre-USB, so files are transferred via PCMCIA card. Have you tried to get your hands on a PCMCIA card anytime in the past 15 years? Impossible, but the workaround is to use an SD card installed in a PCMCIA sled, which can then load into the desk. I have two such cards: one for the PM5D and another for the PM1D. Imagine my astonishment when I opened Studio Manager, loaded the SD card into a USB card reader, and the card showed up as a usable drive under Windows. But wait, there’s more!! Studio Manager saw all my old files. I was teary-eyed (not really, but close!) as I looked at PM5D files for BÖC shows from 18 years back .

Anyway, I built a new file for Jon Anderson & The Band Geeks and saved it onto the SD card. At load-in on the day of the show, I immediately headed for front-of-house and asked the house tech if I could load my file. I held my breath as we accessed the Utility page on the PM5D, where files are loaded. Lo and behold, the desk saw my show file. And loaded it. No issues, no worries about firmware incompatibility, no BS.

• • •

Contrast that with the experience I also had last week using a brand-spanking new digital desk from a major console manufacturer. I’d like to name them, but you might not want to buy their desk after you’re done reading this. Back in July, I used the company’s offline editor—also under Windows because this manufacturer doesn’t give a rat’s behind about anyone that uses a Mac—to create a file for a show in August. That offline file loaded into the desk, seemingly without a problem. I refined it during the show and saved it when the show was over, so I had a solid starting point for the next show using that desk (or so I thought).

When I tried to load the file on this late-model, expensive digital desk, the console would not recognize the file. I learned later that day that there was a firmware incompatibility. Files created using a later version of firmware would not load into desks running earlier firmware. We’ve seen this movie before and it’s unacceptable.

These are tools used by professionals to earn their living. I also learned that the manufacturer actually told the folks at the venue to go backward in firmware because the newer version was buggy. Well, guess what? The older version was not only incompatible with my file but also was equally buggy. Channels on one side of the desk would indicate that they were linked in the software, but actually were not linked. Channels on the other side of the desk linked without a problem. Swapping channels from one side of the desk to the other and back had no effect. Fun.

The end result: I had to build my file from scratch on a day when we were also multitracking the show. Between creating the new file and getting the record feed routed, I spent more than five hours wrestling with this desk.

Attention digital console manufacturers: take a lesson from the competition. Show some respect for your users. There’s no good reason that files built on the same console using different versions of firmware shouldn’t be able to load on older desks. And if for some legitimate reason they can’t, then your offline editor needs to provide an option to save the show file for use with different firmware revisions.

That PM5D had gray hair and a few squirrely faders, but given the choice I’d take it in a heartbeat over that shiny new console that aggravated me to no end. And may aggravate me tomorrow when I’ll see it again and attempt to load a different show, also created using the offline editor.