Monitor Engineer, Greg Keslake says he’s a big fan of Yamaha digital consoles having been introduced to digital over 15 years ago with the Yamaha 01V, and since that time, has extensively used all of the larger format consoles.
“We are using Dante exclusively for FOH, Monitors and Music Production, and I am even using a Dante MY16 Card in my house monitor console for high level returns from production,” he explains.
Keslake said for monitors he’s using one CL5 dedicated to the house band and one dedicated to the guest bands.
“The house band is using the new Aviom 360’s, and I am sending the band each a mixture of direct outs, mixes and matrices. This has given them the comfort of being able to adjust the instruments of their choice very quickly but hasn’t limited my ability to supplement their mixes as needed.
“The Yamaha CL has also made it extremely easy to swap around what channels I send the house band based on weekly sit-in artists via Dante patching.”
On the guest band console, Keslake has dedicated mixes 1-16 as stereo in-ears, 17-24 as wedges, matrix’s 1-7 are effects sends, and matrix 8 is a drum sub mix.
“The dedicated mixes have allowed me to have a very good starting point for almost any guest band with very little information,” he explains. ” I have found the ability to map my own channels to custom fader banks immensely valuable specifically on the CL5 guest band console.
“I am using the C5 and C6 banks to map my daily used mixes enabling me to bounce around very quickly between them. I was also extremely impressed with the addition of the Premium Rack in the CL Series.”
With an audience of 201, James Young, front of house engineer is using a CL3 for the house band with six stems to the CL5 production console: left, right, sub, two vocal stems, lead and BGV, and a ‘guest’ stem for when someone sits in with the house band.
Guest bands land in a separate CL5 with a similar 6 stem set up.
“The Dante network has been very stable, and the Yamaha CL consoles are very easy to set up and use with classic Yamaha reliability. I also appreciate the extra DCA’s, effects rack, and custom fader banks.”