Dan Craik joyfully beholds his new baby

When I took the PM1D school, Dan Craik asked the students if they wanted to see a 5K someday. We all said yes, with the proviso that some nice preamps be incorporated. Well, they developed a new high-definition preamp especially for the 5k, added some automation, painted the whole thing blue, and there it sat, with a very happy Dan Craik presiding in the downstairs demo room.

To get to the 5K, people had to walk by a historical exhibit of the PM series. I told publicist Shane Swisher that there was something wrong with the PM1000 there. He looked puzzled, until I explained that it needed to have an ashtray dumped over it, and some beers poured on it! I am sure I am not the only person who spent too many nights of my life looking at really bad Metallica wannabes, and idiotic big-hair bands, over those familiar old colored knobs.

I told Shane that some people still use the 4K precisely because they do not want any potentially-failable automation onboard, and he explained that, in recognition of that concern, the user can totally disable the snapshot memory and motorized faders on the 5K, and just drive on it old-school style. I had not known that the new desk is in the LCR format, and there are also a total of 35 bus outputs, so that it can also serve as a monitor board. The first few should ship in July, and will be available in 52, 36 and 28 channel configurations, and has 12 VCA’s.

C.K. and PM1000

After I took a look at the 5K, I went upstairs to a demo of the Yamaha Active Field Control system. This is not really a PA system per se, but rather a set of speakers that “listen” through four boundary mics that normally sit at the front of a stage, during an otherwise acoustic performance. Eight loudspeakers were placed atop towers in the room I was in, half pointed up, carrying reverb information, with the others pointed toward the audience, with the sound of early reflections. The speakers were not visible, the idea seems to be for the typical audience to not know that they exist.

This technology has been used in Japan for 15 years and basically emulates a more desirable hall sound, when musicians are in a dry or comparatively unflattering space. For this demo, four Schoeps mics were attached to the lighting truss above the downstage edge, for a violinist and flautist who took turns showing what the system does, playing with it both on and off.

The results were quite remarkable, and delivered a much richer tone than when the instruments were heard dry. I definitely see how this system can really help out smaller halls, although apparently it is also in use in some surprisingly large ones.