Four Degrees West - Yamaha Training Visits Plymouth

Yamaha Commercial Audio UK has a key commitment to training the sound engineers of the future. One of the ways that the company achieves this is through taking training ‘on the road’ to education facilities around the UK. BA (Hons) Live Sound degree students at the Plymouth campus of dBs Music have been the latest to benefit from a session, provided by Yamaha’s Tom Rundle and Chris Irvine.

Founded in 1998, dBs Music provides a range of professional sound courses, aimed at students who want to be a DJ, composer, performer, producer, a live or studio engineer. The Live Sound degree course started in September 2017, with the emphasis very much on practical experience.

dBs has invested in a Yamaha CL5 digital console, plus Rio3224-D and Rio1608-D I/O units, for the course. To give the Live Sound degree students a more comprehensive rundown on Yamaha’s digital mixing systems, Tom and Chris travelled to Plymouth with QL5, TF5 and TF3 consoles, a second CL5, plus DXR10 loudspeakers and headphones.

“An important part of our Live Sound degree is guest lectures and technical presentations to enhance the curriculum, allowing students to see the latest technologies and to network with audio professionals and subject experts,” says course leader Jim Parsons.

“We have a long relationship with Yamaha Commercial Audio and it was an excellent next step to get an expert like Tom to explain the more complex aspects of our CL5, as well as demonstrating other consoles in Yamaha’s digital range.”

Tom led the day with a series of practical exercises, as well as answering questions from the students throughout the sessions.

“It was important to give the students plenty of opportunity for hands-on experience, as well as working on a range of Yamaha desks, which can be found on everything from small corporate presentations and club gigs to festivals and tours by global acts,” he says.

Everything ran seamlessly, thanks in part to the Dante networking of the console range. Students really enjoyed the experience, especially the hands-on time and the informal networking with Tom and Chris,” Jim concludes.

CL Series

Yamaha CL series digital mixing consoles represent a new level of refinement. They offer an evolved experience in accessible mixing, plus sonic purity with sound shaping capabilities that will give the most imaginative engineer unprecedented creative freedom. The CL series embodies the leading standards in live sound in their most advanced, most expressive form.

QL Series

QL series consoles offer all-in-one mixing, processing, and routing capability for small to medium scale live sound, corporate speech events, installations, and much more.

TF Series

TF series consoles take live sound reinforcement to a new level of refinement with TouchFlow Operation™, recallable D-PRE™ preamplifiers, advanced processing and much more.

R Series (AD/DA)

R Series I/O racks employ Dante network audio protocol for exceptional flexibility and freedom in setup and placement, while delivering natural, musical sound that brings out the full sonic potential of mixing consoles and other system components.

DXR Series

DXR Series loudspeakers offer superb high-definition sound and class-leading sound pressure levels—yet in a more compact and extremely functional design that provides a level of versatility unmatched by any speaker in its class today.

Plymouth, UK