Raphael steps up to Yamaha Rivage PM7
- Details
Since his career began in 1962, Raphael’s distinctive voice and performance style have made him an iconic figure amongst Spanish performers. 50m sales of compilation album Ayer, Hoy y Siempre saw record company Hispavox award him a ‘uranium’ disc for the achievement. Having performed in most of the world’s leading venues over nearly 60 years, he is still a very popular live performer. His current RESinphónico tour began in December 2018 and is booked to continue into 2020, with shows at major venues in Spain, Russia, South America, the US and the UK.
Performing his greatest hits accompanied by a full symphony orchestra, Raphael’s long-term Front of House engineer Miguel Angel Garcia chose a Yamaha Rivage PM7 to meet the challenging task of mixing the orchestra and accompanying ‘electric’ musicians - 60 in total.
Miguel Ángel has used a Yamaha CL5 console on previous tours with Raphael. “The CL5’s quality, reliability and popularity have more than proved themselves,” he says. “We used it in a variety of live formats, including an earlier symphonic tour. But when we started designing this tour, we realised that we needed to take a step up with the of number of channels and deliver even greater audio quality.
“This tour saw the addition of more than 10 channels of electric instruments, with some of our usual musicians playing electric guitars, piano and bandoneon, so we reached around 100 channels. To accommodate them all, we had to change the console. We wanted to stay in the Dante realm because, from Raphael’s microphone through to the power amplifiers, it means we can easily adapt the system, depending on venue seating.”
Miguel Ángel had previously tested the PM10 system and knew that Rivage would fulfil all of the tour’s needs. Spanish rental house Fluge is the regular systems provider for Raphael’s tours and, as the company had a PM7 system in stock, it was chosen for the tour.
A Yamaha CL5 console still features on this tour, used by Alberto Murillo on monitors and to pre-mix sections of the orchestra and various other channels. The system is completed by two Rio3224-D2 and one Rio1608-D2 i/o racks, plus a Yamaha AIC128-D Dante Accelerator Card for multi-track recording and virtual soundcheck. Audio fidelity is maintained by using Shure ULX-D and Sennheiser Digital 6000 wireless systems.
(Jim Evans)
