COMPANY PROFILE YAMAHA
manufacturers and it’s likely that Yamaha will be one of the first names that they will utter. To describe Yamaha’s presence in the mixing console market as ‘ubiquitous’ is similar to suggesting that the M25 sees ‘a few’ cars every day. Thousands of Yamaha consoles are in use throughout the world at festivals, gigs, in theatres, nightclubs, hotels, schools, houses of worship, conference suites, community halls and are used to satisfy the biggest to the smallest requirements for sound reinforcement, mixing and distribution.
48 miPRO OCOTBER 2010
Mix and match A
sk anyone involved in the pro audio industry to name the world’s leading mixing console
Yamaha began making mixers in 1972 with the EM60 six-channel 'ensemble mixer' and the EM90, which featured a built-in drum machine, establishing a tradition of including features to make the products more flexible. This is at the core of the design
features of all Yamaha mixers, together with audio quality, ease of use and, most importantly, reliability. Being able to rely on a mixing console – to have that confidence that it won’t let you down – may not be the most glamorous of its functions, but it’s one of the most vital. Speak to audio engineers about Yamaha
consoles and you will hear the same thing time after time: “they never fall over,”
“you have complete confidence that you can walk up to the desk at any time and it’ll be working perfectly,” “I’ve never had one crash,” and so on. Since the EM60 and EM90, the
company has continued to bring many of the industry’s innovations to market. Entering into the professional mixer market in 1974, Yamaha introduced the first live mixing console with VCAs in 1985 and the first digital mixing system, the DMP7, in 1987. 1994’s Promix 01 opened up the markets for digital live sound and recording, while the new millennium brought the PM1D, the industry’s first large-format live digital mixing console.
Yamaha has made a reputation for itself in the pro mixing world that is, to be fair, second-to-none. The onset of digital technology, which was led by Yamaha as much as anyone, has seen the company grow to a position of sheer dominance in the console market. But it’s not all pro – and it’s not all digital as MI Pro learns from the manufacturer’s Peter Peck…
Yamaha’s digital mixers have since become de rigeur in the industry – the PM5D, DSP5D, M7CL, LS9 and DME series all becoming staples of high profile live shows and installations.
IT’S NOT ALL DIGITAL Yamaha’s focus, however, is not exclusively digital products. The company still ploughs as much R&D into producing analog mixers that satisfy a high demand from a range of market sectors, all of which demand slightly different feature sets. “Once the initial period settles when a
new technology is launched and gradually adopted, people realise that there isn’t one product, or range of products, that
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