Yamaha M7CL 48ES

[Simon Lewis]

All,

 

Yamaha are bringing out an M7 variant that replaces the internal preamps with remote Ethersound stagebox system. Looks like you can now buy an M7 and stagebox system without paying for an additional 48 mic preamps! The Ethersound ports are in addition to the existing expansion slots, so you can still use the normal expansion cards.

 

See here...

 

Simon

[Ben Lawrance]

I hope they've done something with the pre-amps in the SB168-ES. They are terrible.

 

I've A/B'd the pre-amps on an M7 and the SB168-ES, and the desk wins hands down. And even then, they still don't sound anywhere near as good as other consoles.

 

On chatting to a colleague, his thoughts are the same. He was thinking about buying a SB168-ES to run with his LS9 on monitor duty, but it just doesn't cut it.

 

 

I hope Yamaha know this, and have/are rectified/rectifying the problem.

[Peter F]

Yamaha are bringing out an M7 variant that replaces the internal preamps with remote Ethersound stagebox system. Looks like you can now buy an M7 and stagebox system without paying for an additional 48 mic preamps! The Ethersound ports are in addition to the existing expansion slots, so you can still use the normal expansion cards.

 

Oh great.

2 strings of cat5, 1 for monitors, 1 for foh.

 

Now even more half hearted PA companies and venues can make monitors and foh share the same set of pre-amps (and basically to save the effort or cost of running a multicore out). Whatever happened to engineers having control of their gain structure.

 

They could have at least bothered to put analogue splits on the back of the unit so that those of us old fashioned enough to want to do our jobs properly would have the option to do so.

 

Oh, don't get me started on why pre-amp sharing is bad, we'd be here all night.

 

Peter

[Rob_Beech]

I have to admit I agree. You can get away with it to a point, the attenuation function can help but it's frowned upon. I also agree with a passive analogue split but nothing a bespokea box can't fix. A normal m7 in monitor world would be fine. Just a cat 5 run to the front.

 

I've not looked at the new unit yet as I'm on my phone. Modern technology at it.s best.

[Simon Lewis]

Although Yamaha attest that their SB168-ES system has been selling like hot cakes, there was always the issue that you were buying the preamps twice over on the M7. At least with the LS9 you could expand the desk input count with the remote preamps.

 

What remains to be seen now is whether this version is priced sensibly - and whether Yamaha can maintain its present market position given the rise in competition.... ;-)

 

Simon

[dougjm]

hot cakes that seem to be hard to sub hire I found.

 

I don't see the point in this desk. imho it needs more local inputs and outputs. and the software really needs to let you swap the H/A control with the atenuation if they even think you should be sharing one rack of pre amps - which I don't like either, hence the KT1248+ rack seems to go out a lot more on jobs these days.

 

What they should have done was built a new control surface based from the M7 addressing some of the issues we all have.

If they did a version with 2 touch screens, 2 centra logic sections and twice the dsp that had no onboard preamps and let you run up to 64 channels then I'd be interested.

 

Also why limit the desk to ES-100 when you could enable it for ES-Giga and 256 channels?

[Peter F]

Also why limit the desk to ES-100 when you could enable it for ES-Giga and 256 channels?

 

because you need to differentiate between an M7 and the more expensive 5D replacement that you are about to launch?

[dougjm]

I was led to believe that yamaha is planing on making the 5d for at least the next 4 years (someone even said 2016) with spares and support available after that - I'm not a yami dealer or "partner" so this is just rumour and speculation of course.

imho I don't believe that the audio network protocol should be the defining character of the desks anyway, that should be the quality and quantity of DSP, overall sonic quality of the desk and amount of expensive hardware included in the package.

[risc]

This is a really interesting document for info and spec on network audio protocols

http://www.aes.org/technical/documents/AESTD1003V1.pdf

 

I tried supposed updated sb168ES, the pre amps were really good wish I could say the same for the outputs. I found that as with all digital kit the less you ask it to do the better, the less channels that are connected within the es system the better it sounds.

The real issue with the es system is network arcitecture, can a serial or ring connection between devices run with as lower latency as a star configuration. The table in the document above shows which network protocols really 'Rock'

While reading up on the es100 website, I stumbled across an important peice of info. The first device on the es network that is switched on(powered up) becomes the clock master for the rest of the network and when we tested this out, wether you switch on the desk or the sb168's first does make a considable difference.

 

Network cables are a major factor with all systems, 300m of cat 6 for £40 is unlikely to work as well as the recomended/tested brands that the manufacturer recomends. This has also been true for us when comaring cables.

 

We have used the Dante protocol for over a year mow handling foh returns with a network of Dolby Lake Processors this works really well until any of my 'engineers' needs to change anything then all hell breaks loose, either I should pay more or this is a little more complex than mere mortals would like it to be, I found the es system setup was not simple and the software wasn't easy either, I think we are not alone as I heard a rumour that the new M7 will integrate with the es stage boxes with an assisted setup

 

This would seem like a step in the right direction, the ability to implement the es system and still have slots available is much more flexible, my own wish list is for a Dante capable stage box, the desk card arrives tomorrow, go on make my day.

[waster]

hot cakes that seem to be hard to sub hire I found.

 

I don't see the point in this desk. imho it needs more local inputs and outputs.

 

You still have three card slots... How much more local IO do you need?!?

[Rich]

I hope they've done something with the pre-amps in the SB168-ES. They are terrible.

 

I disagree. We own four of these units and they are fine.

[Ben Lawrance]

I disagree. We own four of these units and they are fine.

 

Ok. Now A/B them against something else.

 

What desk are they connected to?

[waster]

I've A/B'd the pre-amps on an M7 and the SB168-ES, and the desk wins hands down. And even then, they still don't sound anywhere near as good as other consoles.

 

So what consoles have you compared the M7/SB pre's to?

 

I wish I had time to a/b preamps?!

 

It makes me laugh when people complain about the M7 and LS9 pre's. What was an M7 when it came out £12k, less for lots of people? For a desk with 48 mic in's, 16 outs full parametric eq on in/out, two dynamics per channel, graphic eq's and 4 effects processors it was a great price. I don't think for the money you could match it with analogue equipment.

 

The problem with it in my opinion is that too many companies bought it and used in on gigs which it wasnt appropiate for (where riders were asking for H3k's etc) with less than adequate infastructure (cabling, mics even pa). All these touring guys were unhappy because it's not in the same league, doesnt sound as good (obviously) and there were all the other issues with these mid level hire companies. Which is fair enough.

 

I like the M7 in the right situation (10 monitor mixes, 1000 cap foh show). But there are a lot of other desks I prefer to use. Just depends what size the gig is and what the budget it.

 

I've heard great shows on M7's and terrible ones. There is a lot more to a great live mix than the desk.

 

Digital multicores.. meh. You still need to loom up power, some analogue tie lines, some spare coax or cat 5 lines etc... The weight saving doesnt bother me as everything goes on big trucks. The effort of running in a heavy multicore doesn't bother me cos I dont have to do it so much anymore. You can still get interference into the signal. So as long as something gets me the sound to the desk and back to the speakers I'm not bothered. Having said all that, my mindset has changed a lot since going on the Pro 6 training and seeing the routing flexiblity they have built in to that system.

 

Rant over :-)

[Rich]

I disagree. We own four of these units and they are fine.

 

Ok. Now A/B them against something else.

 

What desk are they connected to?

 

I did A/B them, against the internal head amps, with the Yamaha rep stood next to me. If they'd in any way sounded different I would've reccomended that we buy them.

 

There is no difference in quality between the head amps in our M7s and our satge boxes. However, do M7 head amps sound that nice? Well that's a different debate... Any of our GL4000s will beat an M7 on sound quality, but once you've racked up all that outboard, loaded it into the truck, spent the time patching it in, discovered some dead patch cables, shipped your desk on a bumpy truck to wherever to find you've lost two of your auxs or a couple of cahnnels and then dealt with not being able to copy and paste the EQ over your 20 channels of lapel - you really might as well have just used an M7.

 

I think waster summed it up perfectly. For the kind of jobs we use our M7s for the quality of the pre amps is fine. When we need a better qaulity board we use our PM5 or our heritage.

[BlueShift]

To be honest, I think the lateral applications for this product are far more interesting than the fact that I can use the somewhat average SB1608 boxes. Ethersound is Ethersound, and in theory, I should be able to use Yamaha's NAI48-ES unit and then integrate any preamp I like. If I use Yamaha's fine AD8HR units, I can keep remote control aswell. Output conversion could be handled by anything, even high end converters like Apogee DA16X units.

 

Since I'm not paying for preamps in the console, the possibilities are pretty endless. I could see applications for this in lower cost OB situations...