CX Magazine - The News Magazine for Entertainment Technology

With the retirement of the PM1D concert digital mixing console system and no replacement on the market, Yamaha have flagged a ‘system of tomorrow’ for the new flagship which should arrive for the Frankfurt Musik Messe in March.

While PM1D was joined by the ‘hybrid’ PM5D (which had onboard inputs and outputs, no external or remote rack required), the M7CL and LS9 followed the ‘all onboard’ philosophy which let users replace analogue boards and retain established venue or multicore systems.

Now that fibre has given way to Cat 6, the convenience of remote racks and the low cost of cabling says the next generation consoles will go back to remote.

With LS9 now three plus years old, the time for a family of consoles starting at the top and replacing the PM5D plus the M7CL has arrived. Whether the LS9 goes early is a moot point – users of the PM5D and M7CL would welcome a new approach, even though both these consoles are in the middle of their projected service life.

When Yamaha do, can they please find some more complementary console numbers? What’s wrong with PMD 6000 for the PM5D and PMD 9000 for the big flagship? The last PM was a PM5000, the end of the line for large analog which has also just been laid to rest. The M7CL is a strange name, and although a common console where CX mixes, has a few quirky features as well. The centre scren module looks like it should hinge – it doesn’t – so the console case has a lot of dead air space to deal with this. And the add-on metre ramps at the top are next to useless and usually always added on anyway.

CX predicts 2010 will see Yamaha reframe their live console family, replace the D1000 and D2000 and expect to see some fast action over at Midas now that Uli Behringer is in charge.