EEVblog #840 - Yamaha M3000 Mixing Console Teardown

[bob808]

They look even better as they are round! Thx

[SteigsdB]

Enough PM5000s still kicking around and appreciated nonetheless. One such unit featured in this vid.

Man, that's a lot of 160's in that rack..  Nice mix of vintage and early digital processing in the outboard too.

Interesting that there was a Galileo processor in there when the PA looked to be all V-Dosc.

Was that just a random find or do you know whos rig that was?

[_Andrew_]

I'm finding the same with live sound that digital desks have taken over

http://www.cadac-sound.com/p/digital/

http://www.soundcraft.com/products/mixing-consoles/vi-series

http://www.yamahaproaudio.com/global/en/products/mixers/

[Brumby]

Not surprising.  Once you're in the digital domain, noise figures essentially become inconsequential.  Propagation delay is more of a concern - but with the performance of today's electronics, I would expect that is well in hand.

[Salas]

Enough PM5000s still kicking around and appreciated nonetheless. One such unit featured in this vid.

Man, that's a lot of 160's in that rack..  Nice mix of vintage and early digital processing in the outboard too.

Interesting that there was a Galileo processor in there when the PA looked to be all V-Dosc.

Was that just a random find or do you know whos rig that was?

Random find but I would easily bet its a French reinforcement contractor's system

[djQUAN]

"Bad Ass Semi Corp." - lol.

BA part numbers are by Rohm Semiconductors.

It is an led vu meter driver.
http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Rohm%20PDFs/BA682A.pdf

[Godzil]

I would be really interested in what an Audiophile/fool would think about the construction of such a (real) pro material
I'm sure they would be really disapointed

[German_EE]

Oh yeah. no special cables, no magic rocks, no wooden knobs to avoid adding 'color' to the sound, just solid engineering.

One thing I really learned from this video is that in a complicated system like a mixer ground is GROUND, something substantial and (hopefully) noise free where parts are connected together by thick copper straps. Everything on that ground bus is therefore at 0,000 volts DC and AC.

[rx8pilot]

Oh yeah. no special cables, no magic rocks, no wooden knobs to avoid adding 'color' to the sound, just solid engineering.

One thing I really learned from this video is that in a complicated system like a mixer ground is GROUND, something substantial and (hopefully) noise free where parts are connected together by thick copper straps. Everything on that ground bus is therefore at 0,000 volts DC and AC.

I was a former audiofool in my younger days. When I got into professional sound reinforcement and recording my eyes opened to reality. Even in multi-millin dollar studios, I could not find the ridiculous pseudo-science found in high-end consumer audio. It was very deliberate and clean electronic designs that were very carefully system integrated. Lots of attention paid to clean grounds as stated earlier. Most studios had a technical ground that was far away from mechanical - air conditioning and lights, etc. Microphones had some amount of mystery and voodoo in the marketing, followed by pre-amps.

In live sound, durability, flexibility, etc were dominant design drivers. Audio quality needed to be good, but not exotic. Anyway, my views formed from ridiculous audiophile magazine articles quickly faded. I also learned that the last thing that I wanted my music to sound like is what it sounded like in the studio. The engineering goal in a studio is to get a flat mix with reasonable dynamics so that it sound reasonable in as many environments as possible - home, car, headphones, cassette, CD, LP, etc. I always tweaked my own playback systems to sound the way I like, not some super flat Urei coaxial time aligned studio monitor with Yamaha NS10's as the shit reference.

I like music and great quality playback - but the audio foolishness makes me laugh every day.

[alexanderbrevig]

@rx8pilot did you try to use one of those NS10 bass drivers as kick drum mic? If you're in the recording business you should try that, makes for fun times playing with the real low end.
In my side business as a live audio engineer I use Soundcraft Si. It is a dream to work with   

[rx8pilot]

@rx8pilot did you try to use one of those NS10 bass drivers as kick drum mic? If you're in the recording business you should try that, makes for fun times playing with the real low end.
In my side business as a live audio engineer I use Soundcraft Si. It is a dream to work with   

I traded my budding career in audio for TV/Film production. Never used the NS10 in the opposite direction, sounds like a fun experiment though. I would like to build my own studio for my own use someday. As soon as it becomes a career, it becomes work. I like sound reinforcement and recording too much to ruin it by getting paid, lol. 

The Si is insanely compact for what it does. The last Soundcraft I used was a Europa which was roughly the size and weight of Europe.

[SteigsdB]

The last Soundcraft I used was a Europa which was roughly the size and weight of Europe.

No doubt, plus once in the case it wouldn't fit sideways in a standard truck.

Really messed up the truck tetris

[madisv]

Hi guys
Here's one more video of destroying the console, this time in a bit more brutal way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8UoPj0IW5E&feature=youtu.be
The background is, that Yamaha had a discount program for new consoles. You just had to prove that you have destroyed the old one.
As you see, it didn't break easily