SoundLab Held at USITT with Yamaha Support

	Engineer Buford Jones and SoundLab students

Held at USITT every other year, SoundLab concentrates on free product demonstrations for students, and this year, the conference was devoted to live sound reinforcement. Yamaha Commercial Audio Systems, Inc. made a key contribution by supplying its latest products set up for the event in the Arena at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

"The idea that Mike Hooker (head of sound design at UC Irvine's department of dramatic arts) and myself who co-chaired the project together was to provide students with the opportunity to mix live music while being mentored by some of the top people in the field as well as mixing on premium systems," states Erik Alberg, technical director for events and conferences, Hope College, Holland, Michigan. "The ideal system was to be much larger and possibly bigger than students would ever have a chance to mix on with in their own university settings. We came up with a model of having two consoles at front-of-house and switching the live console from one to the other while bands were performing on stage."

Alberg said they contacted a lot of manufacturers to see if they were interested in participating. "We needed a console to drive the line array rigs and were thrilled when Yamaha stepped up and offered us not only equipment but the expertise of their staff. Kevin Kimmel, a systems application engineer at Yamaha Commercial Audio, was a great help in developing the system layout for front-of-house and monitor system. We created a network of inputs and consoles that not only worked for the SoundLab mixing events, but also for the special events held at USITT such as the keynote speech and award presentations, along with system demonstrations."

The console system included three Yamaha CL5 consoles, two at front-of-house that handled the mixing for the live bands, and one as a monitor console. There was also a CL1 at front-of-house that switched between the two CL5s and was used for running the special events requirements such as wireless microphones, video feeds, and playback. The whole system was connected via Dante and included Yamaha Rio boxes onstage for inputs and outputs to the mains.

The bands were mixed by students at USITT under the mentoring of Buford Jones and Jim Van Bergen, as well as Kimmel who stepped in for one session and provided invaluable services as monitor engineer for all but one of the bands. Over 70 students had the chance to mix during the event.

"The Yamaha consoles were intrinsic to the success of this year's SoundLab," says Alberg. "They worked well and we had no problems with connectivity or routing thanks to Dante and Yamaha. I was also very impressed with the consoles, their flexibility, and ease of use. Sonically they were great and provided our students with an amazing opportunity. The Yamaha staff was critical to the success of the project. Their patience, understanding, and support were great and a real gift."

See Yamaha Commercial Audio at PLASA Focus: Baltimore, May 8 - 9.