Multichannel Recording for Yamaha Consoles
Direct from the Desk
This time around, Val Gamarnik, longtime head FOH at Manhattan's B.B. King Blues Club, tells us how Waves MultiRack plugin host saves the day—in more ways than one.
“I’ve been using Yamaha digital consoles for a while now. Yamaha boards are popular with engineers, clubs, sound reinforcement companies, churches, and other venues around the world. The M7 is my favorite board because it’s user-friendly, which is extremely important when you consider the time-starved sound checks and three-minute stage turnovers that are so common in our business. Plus, Yamaha’s relatively friendly prices make it possible to enter the pro audio digital world just like big boys. One of the things that makes the Yamaha boards so attractive is their ability to use external plugins with super-low latency, so they can be used for processing FOH and monitors.
One of the most exciting things about live sound is the uniqueness of every performance: each show has its own acoustics, its own audience, its own energy. We’ve all had great shows where we wish we could have recorded it properly.
Now, we can: With the latest version of Waves MultiRack, Yamaha consoles can handle multichannel recording as well. What makes the deal even sweeter is the fact that no additional hardware needed; you can host MultiRack and record direct-to-DAW all on the same computer.
Anyway, a few weeks ago I did a series of concerts featuring a famous singer/songwriter celebrating his 60th birthday. Every show had multiple guests, his friends from throughout his illustrious career. The birthday boy wanted to keep things low key, so he decided not to budget a mobile truck for recording. So this was great opportunity to secretly try my new setup. I loaded up the Yamaha M7 with two WSG-Y16 cards to get my channel count up to 32. I had 28 inputs from the stage and four audience mics to pick up crowd ambience: two up front and two in back. Routing was painless, and within a few minutes MultiRack was ready to rock, fully setup with loads of plugins, with all 32 channels routed for recording, directly direct to my DAW of choice, Reaper. I recorded dry signals without MultiRack processing, for extra flexibility later on. You can actually record with or without MultiRack processing, or both.
The shows went great, and everything went well without a glitch. Since this took place before the official release of the new MultiRack version, I had used a beta version of MultiRack—meaning I wasn’t 100% sure how the recording would turn out. So after the shows, I took the recordings back to my home studio, and opened up the tracks. Then I recreated my MultiRack processing chains and loaded up the plugin presets from the show. I was amazed how close the results were to what I remembered from the show. After a few more adjustments, I made some mp3s and emailed them to the artist. He called me back, very happy and excited. He told me he was actually regretting his decision not to record the show, since the performances went great and had a very special vibe that would have been impossible to recreate. MultiRack to the rescue—yet again!”
Hey all,
One of the cool things about working on a digital surface is that you can bring your file that you have been working on for months to a different console and scenario, load it up, and fire away. One of the cool things about being the headliner engineer on a long tour is that you get to see a bunch of different opening acts digital files come thru your console. I am here to admit (the first step towards recovery) that I secretly look at files of opening act engineers to see what they are doing. I absolutely do NOT modify the file in any shape or form—I just want to see what people are doing; I guess it's the voyeur in me. Read More