Niavac’s Rivage mixes Peace Proms tour
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The company has invested in a Yamaha Rivage PM7 digital mixing system to continue its commitment to high quality service and it has already been out on tour.
“We used Yamaha digital mixers from the beginning,” says Loft Sound’s Steve Corr, who became Niavac events manager at the time of the acquisition. “Our first mixer was an LS9 and our inventory went on to include M7CL, PM5D, all three CL series mixers and smaller analogue boards for conference work.”
He continues: “We looked at a number of options and Rivage PM7 was the obvious choice. All of our engineers - indeed most engineers - are familiar with the Yamaha control surface, so the PM7 was also the easiest transition up to a premium mixing system. The sheer amount of buses and the way they can be used, the sound quality, the amount of EQs, the Premium Rack and the way that we can insert effects and send them any way we want were also huge points in its favour.”
One of Steve’s biggest challenges is mixing an annual tour with the Cross Border Orchestra Ireland (CBOI), a not-for-profit orchestra for 12-24 year olds which provides performance opportunities and high quality musical training. The annual Peace Proms tour is an arena-sized production featuring the orchestra and a choir of up to 5,000 members.
The 2020 tour kicked off in January with a sell-out show at the M&S Bank Arena Liverpool, where Steve was pleased that Rivage PM7 allowed him to mix all the production on one surface.
“With drums, bass, guitar and keyboards in the middle of the orchestra - as well as pipers, drum corps and Irish dancers - it’s a difficult show to mix, with 30-40 open microphones for the choir alone,” he says. “Previously I mixed it on a pair of CL5s, using one for the orchestra and routing a stem to the second board, where I mixed everything else. With Rivage PM7 and its massive buss count, I can mix multiple orchestra stems on one surface and its features makes it the ideal system for this production.”
The Peace Proms tour continues into February and March with shows in Galway, Dublin, Belfast and Waterford.
(Jim Evans)
