"My main consideration was space," said Groothuis of his decision to use Yamaha's PM5D mixing console. "This is a small theatre and seat revenues are important. I needed a certain amount of channels and a certain sound quality. It was a toss up between having a larger conventional console in a position where the operator couldn't hear, or a smaller one in a good listening position. There was nothing else that fulfilled those criteria and was able to fit in the physical space available."
Did this force any compromise upon you in terms of your goals for the show? "No it didn't; audio quality was not an issue and although there are even higher quality desks I would have preferred, the sound of the desk is very good, and for the money it's fantastic value."
Operationally Groothuis was looking for a great deal of functionality within the desk: "I didn't have a problem with the two layers of the desk, I put all the [22] radio inputs on one layer, everything else on the second." The show band provides a further 24 inputs of audio. "Although I was advised to avoid them I found the desk's internal reverbs to be very good. Overall the desk was very easy to manipulate, it's great to have all the parameters within one window; simple."
He did however, express some caution. "Quite a lot of time is taken up setting up the selective recall; this requires a lot of preparation. When you're doing a musical you start with one set-up or another and you build a progressive set of gains, person by person. Each individual gain impacts on the others, including those you've already set, so you're continually adjusting - building what is a complex gain structure. With this desk there are so many different libraries, that process can end up taking a lot of the operator's brain power - whereas what we want is for all that to be invisible so they can concentrate on the variables that occur in any live show. Essentially the desk cares for EQ, routing, scene changes, etc - the operator concentrates on levels."
Groothuis admitted part of his reservation came from this being his first time with the PM5D, "but obviously I have used Yamaha digital desks before. The thing is, ask six different operators familiar with this board how to approach something, and they'll give you six different methods. There's so many ways to do the same thing. In the end, because the software assumes everything you do to be recordable, we set the desk to manual throughout rehearsals and then as we entered the Previews stage we allowed certain parameters to be recorded. It took us a week to get the desk set as we wished; by initially allowing things to be switched off we gradually built in an allowance for brain-power, 30% working, 70% mixing. The operator needs that split to be fully focussed on the show."
Has he identified any issues that would make this a better theatre show desk? "I would like to see a dedicated 'Next / Previous' button for running theatrical shows - why would I want to assign one myself? And I'd like to see hard mute buttons on the inputs, and a desk mute facility. That said, it's a much better desk than the PM1D, it's a huge leap forward. An enormous amount of inputs for such a small desk, it's small, light, quiet (sonically) and has decent faders. Excellent."
PRG Europe is supplying the rig for lighting designer Andrew Bridge. The production uses three very different sets: a rehearsal room, which gives way to a theatrical technical rehearsal in the 'Enoch Powell A
