South African audio-visual production company Sound Stylists recently invested in two new Yamaha PM3 RIVAGE consoles, supplied and supported by Midrand-based Stage Audio Works (SAW), and were quickly deployed late last year as part of a networked audio system at the Samsung Galaxy Move Festival held near Johannesburg.
“We were already aware of the RIVAGE platform, but simply didn’t have the need for it at the time,” says Kevin Glover, director of Sound Stylists. “However, recently we were doing some research into new desks and were impressed to discover the RIVAGE surfaces all spoke to the same DSP. The fact that you can run two surfaces on a single DSP was an attractive concept, as it allows us to double our fader count as required. The DSP can also be run on its own, mirrored for redundancy or upgraded from the base 140 channels to an impressive 280.
“What swung it was the ease of integration with our current systems with its Dante compatibility – the technology slots nicely into our existing Rio racks and obviously plays nicely with our Yamaha QLs and CLs, making it a smooth and cost-efficient transition.”
The annual Samsung Galaxy Move festival, this time hosted by 947 Radio, takes place at Prime Park in Olifantsfontein and offers a line-up of popular South Africa artists. Sound Stylists were involved every step of the way, from the stage design to the provision of the audio system and production on the day.
The original system design placed the two PM3s at front of house, with a CL1 between them providing feeds to the subwoofers, outhangs and frontfills. Sixty (60) channels were dedicated to the various effects required for each band, which were all run off Rio 32 Channel Dante Racks, and they all performed sound checks and had their settings saved prior to the event.
However, unforeseen circumstances spurred a change in direction: “We experienced a lot of bad weather leading up to the concert, resulting in moisture interfering with our CL5, which was on monitor duty, rendering it inoperable,” explains Glover. “Fortunately, we were able to replace this with one of the PM3s, and as the desk is really intuitive, the monitor engineer was able to get everything up and running quickly. Most of the saved information had to be rebuilt, but we managed to resolve this in time. All’s well that ends well!”
“We’re proud to have supplied Sound Stylists with two new PM3 Rivage consoles which will serve them well for years to come,” adds Nathan Ihlenfeldt, CTO at SAW. “Samsung Galaxy Move Festival is a significant occasion for a lot of South Africans and it’s great that we could play a part in that too, even if it was in a supportive capacity.”
