“Yamaha’s PM1D and PM5D digital mixers have been a mainstay of large scale live productions throughout the world for more than a decade - be they touring live music, festivals, theatre, musicals, dance, municipal or corporate events. Bringing yet greater levels of quality, flexibility, functionality and reliability to the iconic PM name, the RIVAGE PM10 is a brand new flagship which will again redefine the direction of the digital audio mixing industry,” says the announcement.
Yamaha also states that, at the core of the RIVAGE PM10 was the intention to deliver the very best possible quality sound. As Yamaha did with its previous generations of digital consoles, the focus was on designing high-quality input channels, starting with new microphone preamplifiers. This is achieved with the newly-developed RY16-ML-SILK Hybrid Microphone Preamplifier.
The unique design features an analog section which Yamaha says “delivers supremely consistent, natural-sounding audio, even at high gain levels.” The preamp circuit is partnered with a 96 kHz, 24-bit ADC, followed by enhanced Yamaha VCM digital modelling of Rupert Neve Designs transformer circuitry and acclaimed Silk processing.
With this combination, audio engineers can have a completely transparent audio input path or, using the Silk Red and Blue modes and the Texture control in the console’s selected channel, can be creative with the color and character of each individual input. And creativity seems to be the focus for this new generation of mixing consoles, following on its previous experience with the CL Series consoles, where Yamaha collaborated with Rupert Neve for the digital modelling processing plug-ins.
With the RIVAGE PM10, Yamaha has taken its collaboration with other manufacturers much further. As well as forging closer ties with Rupert Neve in the development of the RY16-ML-SILK, new VCM models of the Rupert EQ773, the Rupert Comp 754, the Rupert EQ810, and the Rupert Comp 830 are featured.
Not only that, but Yamaha has worked with TC Electronic to include the VSS4HD room simulation reverb and the highly creative “NonLin2” stereo reverb, as featured in their popular System 6000 devices. Yamaha has also been working closely with Eventide to add the H3000-Live Ultra-Harmonizer as a future standard inclusion in the RIVAGE PM10 system.
The system is operated via a user interface that will be familiar to every Yamaha console user, yet it delivers even more flexible operating possibilities. One of the most important and attractive aspects of the RIVAGE PM10 control surface is a full Selected Channel section. This was a key element of the PM1D and PM5D consoles and is a fundamental aspect of the design for RIVAGE PM10’s user interface.
Further innovations include greatly enhanced Scene functions, dual monitor busses, the ability to run up to 384 effects processors at once and four USB connections for data storage, mouse/keyboard control and two track USB recording.
The backbone of the RIVAGE PM10 system is Yamaha’s newly developed TWINLANe ring network, which can handle up to 400 audio channels at 96 kHz, 32-bit over distances of up to 300 m. TWINLANe can connect up to eight RPio622 I/O units and, at launch, up to two CS-R10 control surfaces and up to two DSP-R10 DSP engines, expandable with a future upgrade.
The RPio622 features six of Yamaha’s new RY card slots, into which can be inserted three different types of I/O card, providing up to 96 mic preamps per rack. In addition, the RPio622 and DSP-R10 feature the new HY card slots (two and four respectively) for further I/O (one HY card slot in both the RPio622 and DSP-R10 is needed to connect the units to the TWINLANe network), while all three hardware components of the system feature two of Yamaha’s familiar MY card slots.
With the CS-R10 control surface also featuring 8 × 8 local analog I/O and 8 × 8 AES3 I/O with sample rate conversion, a fully-expanded RIVAGE PM10 system can accommodate more than 3,000 inputs and outputs. A new, optional HY-Dante card can be used to integrate multitrack recording or other hardware, including other Yamaha digital consoles.
In all, RIVAGE PM10 is one of the most powerful and flexible digital mixing systems ever developed. “For a number of years, the industry has been asking when Yamaha will launch a new, state-of-the-art digital console for large scale productions. We have always said that, when it comes, it will be as much a landmark for the industry as the PM1D and PM5D were. So I am very pleased to say that, with RIVAGE PM10, that time has arrived,” says Chihaya “Chick” Hirai, Director of Pro Audio Business Unit, Yamaha Corp. of Japan.
“We believe that RIVAGE PM10 will be another pivotal moment in the history of digital audio mixing. It delivers a system which will be the most versatile, the most user-friendly and the most reliable for all larger events,” Hirai concludes.
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