Originally published on ProSoundWeb
Encore Event Technologies, a Freeman umbrella company located throughout North America, provides event production to over 95 hotel/venue properties nationally. A leading provider of unique, creative, and innovative in-house audiovisual services for hotels, conference centers and resorts, its subsidiary, Encore Productions, is a full-service creative production and A/V equipment rental company.
Encore Event Technologies Beverly Hills location recently purchased a Yamaha RIVAGE PM10 digital audio console from Chicago-area sound company TC Furlong for use at the Beverly Hilton Hotel’s International Ballroom in Beverly Hills, California. Encore has a contract to provide all of the hotel’s production needs including audio, video, and lighting.
The International Ballroom hosts over 300 high profile events per year ranging from televised awards shows like the Golden Globes to the upcoming Clive Davis pre-GRAMMY party, the Academy Awards Oscar nominee luncheon, the Hollywood Film Awards, The Directors Guild Awards and so on.
In early December, the console was used for Ebony Magazines Ebony Power 100 Awards, and the NYC based American Ballets Nutcracker.
“We’ve utilized Yamaha consoles in our venues for a long time, including the PM5D, LS9, QL5 and a number of O1Vs that we have in our inventory, states Rachel Wolfe, director of event technologies, Encore Event Technologies. We love the Yamaha interface, and the boards are supremely reliable, user friendly, and sound great. We have been anticipating the release of the PM10 for some time and are thrilled to finally have it installed. The console seems to have managed to incorporate the wish lists of all our audio engineers into one extremely flexible board.”
Wolfe said the International Ballroom is an unusual and historical venue and hosts a surprising range of events.
“Both the Beverly Hilton and Encore treat this room as a theatrical venue and not as a typical hotel ballroom with back-to-back shows all year long. In any given week, we could have a Broadway review on Monday, Diana Ross on Tuesday, a ballet on Wednesday, Ozzy Osbourne on Thursday, and a televised award show on Friday, so we need a console that can handle this demand. The PM10 has shown itself to be able to do so gracefully. Our clientele are extremely production savvy; we deal with touring road managers and engineers, film industry line producers, television producers and directors, etc. They want to know that we have the top of the line gear available and that we can pull off their event flawlessly.”
“I have had a lengthy history mixing on Yamaha consoles”, states Jack Hayback, freelance front of house engineer for Encore. “Together with help from the folks at TC Furlong and freelance engineers Clint Rowland and Serguei Soloviev, we installed the console and built several templates for the space. Although, I was slightly intimidated at the prospect of getting to know another digital console, the PM10 is remarkably easy to use. I committed a lot of energy to educating myself on it, but as soon as I started using the console, it became second nature. Literally, within a few days, I knew everything I needed to know. With a lot of great features, the PM10 is very definitely a Yamaha console.”
Hayback compares the new PM10 to a brand new Tesla switched to Ludicrous Mode. “I can’t imagine using another console for this application. Any other board would be moving back in time. For me, the defining moment was the inclusion of a 96k, 24-bit sampling rate. This is huge for audiophiles like me because up until now, it has been very difficult to get anything over 48k in a live digital console.”
“The PM10 has been an extremely pleasant mixing experience, from the responsiveness of the EQ to the ease of use of inserts and plugins, says Hayback. The networking capabilities and the fiber optic interconnectivity between components via the TWINLANe network are simple and bulletproof. TWINLANe makes it unbelievably easy to connect various components and find them on the network.”
Regarding the new SILK processing, Hayback adds that “for many years Yamaha consoles have been very one for one; what you put in is what you get out, but now with the SILK feature, designed in collaboration with Rupert Neve Designs, harmonics are added to the sound, bringing a nice texture to the audio. As an example, for an acoustic guitar or on a lead vocal, by adding a bit of SILK, the sound suddenly jumps out of the mix. I’ve used SILK on all kinds of instruments, but one thing I’ve had great success with is that we often drive the sound system with the PM10 and have guest engineers’ consoles patched into the Yamaha. I take the engineer’s master outputs into the PM10 and add SILK on them, bringing brilliance to the entire mix. And, by adding SILK texture onto say, a musical orchestral mix, the whole mix just opens up. With 144 inputs, 72 mix buses and 36 matrixes, the PM10 is a perfect fit for what we do in the International Ballroom. We are constantly pushing the boundaries of what mixing consoles should be doing, so for us, more is better.”
Hayback notes that visiting engineers are excited to see the PM10. “Everyone has been waiting for the next most significant console from Yamaha to hit the streets, so now that it is here, engineers want to know how to use it because they know they will start seeing this console everywhere. The excitement for it has been fun to watch. For the most part, engineers are embracing the PM10 greatly and trying to get more seat time behind it. If you are familiar with any of the current Yamaha digital consoles, you will adapt very quickly to the PM10. With Yamaha CL, QL, or M7CL experience, the layout and touch screens will be very familiar.”
For more information about Yamaha’s PM10 Rivage system or anything from our list of over 100 professional audio manufacturers, contact our Sales Team at 847.367.9588 or sales@tcfurlong.com.
