Yamaha RIVAGE PM10 Stars At Switzerland’s Biggest Music Festival
Throughout 2016, Yamaha’s flagship RIVAGE PM10 digital mixing console has been seen on an increasing number of events and tours, giving engineers the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the state-of-the-art system. In late July it was specified by Swiss rental company Hyperson SA for Paléo Festival Nyon - Switzerland’s biggest music festival - where it was the star of a show which also featured several other Yamaha digital mixers.
Established in 1972, Hyperson SA is one of mainland Europe’s major technical production companies. It has been supplying audio equipment to the Paléo Festival since 1978. “Yamaha consoles are suitable for a very wide range of applications and everyone knows them. That’s incredibly useful for festivals, because a lot of bands have show files and it’s very easy to accommodate guest engineers. For example many artists at Paléo came with CL show files or their own CL series console,” says Jérôme Burri, in charge of Hyperson’s presence at the festival.
Paléo features five main stages, hosting a wide variety of artists and styles of music, with a sixth area - La Ruche - home to an array of street theatre, circus acts, comedy and visual poets.
Hyperson SA supplied CL5 consoles for Front of House and monitors on Le Détour stage and a PM1D on monitors at The Dome. But the star of the show was undoubtedly the RIVAGE PM10, which mixed FoH sound at the 15,000-capacity Les Arches stage. Chris Hauri, chief sound engineer at Les Arches, was impressed with the console.
“I spent time learning every aspect of the RIVAGE PM10, so I knew the answers in advance to any questions I might be asked by visiting engineers,” he says. “Everybody knows Yamaha CL series mixers and they will easily be able to find their way on the RIVAGE PM10… which is exactly what happened.
“I mixed a couple of performances on the console myself, both with and without soundchecks. I found it very straightforward to use and really enjoyed it. There are not many live consoles which allow the sound to really breathe. But there is no harshness in the RIVAGE PM10’s EQ - when you push up the high frequencies, you just get clean high end. I loved that. There are very few other desks where I can feel that ‘breathing’ in the upper frequencies.”
The console was tasked with mixing a wide range of performances throughout the festival, from one man shows and DJs through to hip-hop, rock, pop and classical music. But it easily coped with everything that was asked of it.
One performance that could have been challenging was the Sinfonietta de Lausanne, which involved the biggest channel count of around 80. But the Sinfonietta’s Front of House engineer Fabien Ayer found the RIVAGE PM10 a familiar, straightforward experience.
“I used the offline editor software to prepare for the show and, although I was only able to spend three hours on the console, I quickly found that operating it was very similar to the CL5, which I know well,” he says.
“Mixing classical music needs to accurately reproduce the true sound of the instruments and keep the balance as natural as possible. The RIVAGE PM10 really helps to achieve this, because the preamps sound great and the EQ is very accurate. I was very happy to use it for this performance.”
“It’s a great console. It sounds really good, it has beautiful preamps and processing, it’s easy to use and reliable,” adds Chris. “I had no problems, no complaints from any engineers… and a lot of curious people going ‘Wow - the new RIVAGE!’ I really enjoyed having it in my hands for a few days. I am also very grateful to Yamaha’s Jean-Pierre Decollogny, Stefan Zeiger and Ruben van der Goor for their assistance and support.”
