Now that software issues have been resolved, this is no longer viewed as being critical. There is also a similar primary/back-up arrangement for two power supplies. Theoretically, the engine can handle a total of 320 inputs and 192 outputs, which is good, because that is exactly what I use to make my home demos! Ba-boom, thank you very much, you’re a tough crowd!

In the back of the engine is access to the modules full of I/O cards, which can be line, mic, or a combination of the two. Each module holds eight cards. Looking at a set of four XLR’s in a card, arranged vertically for inputs, the top two are A and B sources for a given input, and the bottom two are for the next number. The A or B XLR for each input can be selected from on board the control surface, much as many analogue desks have that feature today. That way one can switch rapidly between, for example, two drum sub-snake boxes on rolling risers at a festival.

All routing and internal patching must be defined, which is part of what makes the PM1-D a powerful tool, with different potential applications. Disneyland, or a showroom in Vegas, or a Broadway production, may set theirs up one way for a show that is driven off show control, SMPTE or MIDI, that always happens strictly in scripted order, with no improvisation, just the same scenes, night after night. Ronnie’s Regional sound company, on the other hand, can make a set of “festival patch” templates for those outdoor radio shows they are about to do, with ten different bands, and also provide pre-configured generic reverbs and delays for the touring engineers to use.

Universal Amphitheatre’s Mike Hogstrand, making a very important adjustment, next to MVS Pete Kudas

Or let’s say you have a volunteer at a church function, or the guy who opens up a rehearsal studio, people who only need to know how to call up a single preset and then walk away from the desk and return a few hours later to shut it down. I know that when I worked on a cruise ship, the people that hired me were bug-eyed with techno-lust, dreaming that someday they would be able to buy a desk like this, with pre-sets, that the bus boy could flip on, and they would not have to pay Chris Kathman!

As it was, I set up a channel on their Hill Multimix console, for a talk mic, that the bus boy would activate for bingo in the afternoon, while I was kicking it out by the pool. Hey, I earned my living! You do not want to know what the variety and production show performers put me through! Not to mention the Male Nightgown Contest!

There is an auto-patch function on the PM1-D that puts the numbered XLR inputs in the onstage rack directly to the same channel numbers on the console, and also automatically sends the returns for the internal EFX to the stereo returns on the board. (Yes, I am going to use the terms console, desk, and even board in this article, after having clearly explained that it is just the control surface.)

It is possible to send from one “virtual” patch point (representing an XLR input) to multiple board channels, and also to mult a channel to different outputs. Instead of renting a press box, if you have enough output cards, you can say, “I want these eight outputs to all be a mono mix out, for those last-minute TV camera operators, who come up sweating and panting, tripping over their tripods, wanting a line out for their little wireless transmitters.”

The PM1-D offers not only matrix outs in its virtual patchbay, but also what are called “mixes.” There are 48 of them (with 24 rotary “pots” to control each one’s level, with an upper and lower layer to access) and they serve the function of traditional mixes on a monitor board, or aux sends, or subgroups on a house board. A channel is first assigned to one of them, and only then is that mix sent to a matrix out – you cannot send a channel to a matrix by itself.

When you set up one of the eight on-board effects, you choose which mix drives its input, and where you want the outputs to return. All of the above can be saved in your patch library and recalled, and also put on a disk for your next gig on a PM1-D in a distant land. External effects that you are used to, and feel comfortable with, can also be patched in via XLR’s on I/O cards.

Bob Ludwig getting into it

I happen to be addicted to auto-pans, myself, it’s a dirty little secret, but we are all sophisticated people here. So my personal project, my moment of triumph on the PM1-D, was to build my own auto-pan, defining which mix would drive it, where it would return, the speed, everything, and get a keyboard sound whirling and beating madly in mid-air, which really puzzled the other students standing around at the end of that day.

The PM1-D can internally generate SMPTE, although that cannot be sent to the outside world. For people involved in timecode related projects, it does accept an external SMPTE source, and the user can select different frame rates or offsets. Up to 999 scenes can be stored, that snapshot every single parameter. Yeah, buddy!