Yamaha LS9

[TimmyP1955]

If you are not in a hurry, there's a new Soundcraft coming out late summer or in the fall that looks like it might be an LS9 beater if the price is right - a mockup was shown at the latest trade show (sorry that I can't find the link). It has a full selected channel (instead of knobs and selection buttons), touch screen, and the faderglow feature of the current line.

[onewatt]

Hi

 

The LS9 what can I say, if sound quality is important to you then don't buy it.

[Shez]

Care to elaborate a little on that? What is it specifically that you don't like about it? What would you suggest would be a significant improvement at that price point?

[Stan Hope-Streeter]

Care to elaborate a little on that? What is it specifically that you don't like about it? What would you suggest would be a significant improvement at that price point?

I'm not onewatt, but...

 

The LS9 is not a particularly nice sounding console, and if sound quality were the only consideration, the answer might be "a secondhand upmarket analogue board"

But sound quality isn't the only consideration, and an XL3 (and racks full of outboard) takes up far too much space and requires a crew of 4 to move it around....

 

P.S. I use LS9's regularly, and they aren't the most user friendly things compared with some other digital consoles, but availablity, convenience and portability are usually the most important considerations.

[mike7172]

Really like the LS9,

a con I could mention for you is that if you want to run anything in mono you cant link it from your LR bus, you have to flick through each channel (which in fairness you can do in banks of 8) and put them into mono, which I found out this morning!

obviously once you've done it you can scene it so not too bad.

they've raised the price a little bit now so looking at a t-live or si2/3 could be an option as I think a few of the guys have mentioned,

but (and I reckon il get some stick for this...) the roland v-mix is a good desk for price, the pre's are pretty cack, but for what your after it's also an option!

 

hope this helps

 

M

[onewatt]

The LS9 does offer good value for money compared to a analogue set up with all the outboard gear. But I do question the quality of sound for me it is below the standard that we should be trying to obtain, a couple of weeks we had a show in using a LS9 with D&B system along with a young sound engineer, listing to the sound in the stalls was shocking, to use the USB record / playback to eq the system as the young man did is not the way forward, unaware that the sound was bad the answer was but it is industry standard kit. I use a Soundcraft Vi4 it replaced our Soundcraft Vienna (15 years old) doing an A/B on the sound quality the Vienna sounds better in many ways, the Vi4 out of all the digital consoles available at the time sounded for me the best, it was a very close demo Digico D1 very good, Allen Heath I Live very good, Digidesign Profile poor as was the Yamaha MC7, this was on sound quality only, it turns out the consoles that use fixed point processing, the audio quality is poor. I have used the Vi4 now for two years its a great desk but the sound quality is limited, it does'nt help when the power supplys are switch mode theres a lot of HF modulation. Its sounds like I am big analogue fan but it does come down to the facts everything starts of in the analogue domain and is converted so it can't be better.This is ware the problems begin as the digital market place is getting bigger and the demand for cheaper consoles the digital audio quality is going to go down, high quality DAC's are expensive.

The industry needs to have a hard look at itself and come up with some kind of standard as we are going backwards in quality.

[Stan Hope-Streeter]

The industry needs to have a hard look at itself and come up with some kind of standard as we are going backwards in quality.

 

Yes indeed, and the benchmark of quality for most people now is MP3, plus the low bit-rate DAB we are presently being persuaded to trade in our "old fahioned analogue" radios for.

 

The days of aiming for high quality audio are probablly on their way out, as everything now is dictated by "the market" and its need to generate the fastest possible profits. In that situation, providing higher quality than the average punter can appreciate is a non-recoverable cost.

[dan slv-tech]

to use the USB record / playback to eq the system as the young man did is not the way forward, unaware that the sound was bad the answer was but it is industry standard kit.

 

not sure what he was doing with the USB port but you can only shift show files and record/play back, and nothing else.

sounds like the young man didnt know what he was doing.

 

I regularly do shows with LS9's, and alot of X west end shows use LS9's when touring, loose 2 seats as apposed to ,lightweight, robust, flexible, lots of bang for your buck

[david.elsbury]

a couple of weeks we had a show in using a LS9 with D&B system along with a young sound engineer, listing to the sound in the stalls was shocking, to use the USB record / playback to eq the system as the young man did is not the way forward, unaware that the sound was bad the answer was but it is industry standard kit.

Is this the first and only time you've heard the LS9? I think you said it yourself when you said "a young sound engineer". He may not have had the experience to get the sound sounding right- what do you think would have happened if he'd been given a Midas analog console, or a Digico console?

 

If his ears and his mixing weren't up to scratch, I hardly think you can blame it on the console.

[onewatt]

May be I did'nt quite explain it very well the facility on the LS9 to play music, mp3 quality is there to be used and the young lad used it to eq the system, for starters this is not the way forward I am shure there will be other engineers doing the same thing, plenty engineers plug there ipods into Midas consoles and digital consoles this has the same result, the LS9 sound quality is just not acceptable and I will not allow them to be used throw my house PA. Sound quality can only be as good as the weakest source and as the LS9 is technically the pre-amp it's not up to the task.

[david.elsbury]

So you're saying if the engineer had used a commercial CD and a CD player then the mix would automatically have been wonderful?

 

Also you didn't answer my question-

Is this the first and only time you've heard the LS9?

I think you're missing the point I was making, which is, if the engineer was inexperienced, regardless of what desk he was on, he would have achieved a similar result.

 

Therefore if this is the only time you've heard the LS9 in action, I think you're being a bit harsh with judging the desk based on that.

[Shez]

the LS9 sound quality is just not acceptable and I will not allow them to be used throw my house PA

Good luck with that attitude. One of my venues has received several nationally touring shows recently that tour an LS9 and plumb in to the house PA in each venue (d&b in this case). No complaints thus far...

[Stan Hope-Streeter]

... the LS9 sound quality is just not acceptable and I will not allow them to be used throw my house PA. Sound quality can only be as good as the weakest source and as the LS9 is technically the pre-amp it's not up to the task.<

 

um ... yes ... er, right ...

 

so what is your house PA then?

 

What speakers do you have, and what's the system processor/crossover?

 

And what acoustic treatment has been applied to your venue?

 

 

Enquiring minds want to know ...

[onewatt]

No not the first time a LS9 has been at our venue we are a recieving house and are very common along with there own PA I will allow them tap in to our upper circle speakers, but I would not have an LS9 totally running my FOH. To answer some other points we were the first theatre in the UK to put D&B in and as Simon says from D&B we are the first theatre to take it out, replaced it with Opus Audio PSD800T.

[Ynot]

Hmmm...

 

Onewatt, two things.

 

Firstly I'm pretty much of the same opinion of some of the FAR more qualified noise boys here by saying that judging a desk by the results of a user who might be described as being at less than the top of the game (yet) is pretty arrogant.

Whilst, yes, the right kit in the right hands can be a dream and easy to use, but put the right kit in the wrong hands and the result is most likely going to be worse than the wrong kit in the right hands...

 

And secondly, I for one would be grateful to you if you could phrase your responses a bit better. A bit more punctuation would make your posts SO much easier to read/decipher!