I'm back from a Spring Break trip to Disney. Here are a few highlights:

1) Wishes and Dinner at the California Grill - This was not my first time watching Wishes from atop the Contemporary, although now they have such privileges reserved only for guests who are dining. Since I had never eaten there before, I decided we'd give it a try. The meal was definitely not disappointing, although I still think the Yachtsman Steakhouse may be better. The sushi was the best I've ever had, and the fireworks didn't disappoint either.

2) The Hilton on Hotel Plaza Boulevard - Wow...what a nice joint. It's every bit as nice as any of the deluxe Disney resorts, and offers most of the same amenities (except of course monorail or boat access to the parks). I would definitely stay here again. The rate was cheaper than Disney, we were still able to do Extra Magic Hours, it was walking distance to Downtown Disney, and our 10th floor room offered a great view of the shuttle launch on Sunday evening.

3) The Caribbean Beach Resort - Really nice, with a spacious room, but here is my problem with moderate level resorts: for the extra money, you really ought to get valet and bell services. But it's still a step up from the value resorts. Here's what you get that you don't at the All-Star: all 2 story buildings, slightly better parking, closer bus stops, a table service restaurant, nicer/less-cheesy decor and theme-ing, and more recreation options. The hot tub was a nice way to end the day until it got taken over by teenagers acting like they had never seen the opposite sex in swimwear.

One other comment here not related to any class of resort. I have all but written off Disney's bus service as a do not do. Too many times I have waited 45 minutes or an hour for a bus to a park, only to have to combat thousands of people trying to fight over the same bus back to the hotel at park close. Just not worth it when it is so easy to drive. My new favorite for Epcot is to use valet at the Boardwalk then ride the Friendship boats or walk over. Usually the Boardwalk is bustling with activity after Epcot closes, so it's a good way to get a two-for-one.

4) Surrey Bikes at the Boardwalk - Definitely fun, but more work than you would think. Make sure you do it with someone who can pull their own weight.  ;-) My guess is it gets easier with the more people you have.

5) Disney's Guest Relations - Just awesome as always, and I'll leave it at that.

6) Soarin' - Will the "new attraction" popularity from this ever where off? I swear between it and Mission: Space, Epcot is no longer the escape from crowds that it used to be. I think they should build another one at DAK and call it Soarin' Over Africa to alleviate some of the demand. Anyway, if you don't get over there by noon when they usually run out of Fast Passes, plan on waiting in the 2 hour stand-by line. It may be worth it.

7) The American Idol Experience - Seriously one of the coolest set designs I have ever seen, and the light show was great too. I have to admit I was entertained. Job well done.

8) Illuminations from Future World - Okay, I know I mentioned this after the last trip, but it's worthy of doing so again. As many times as I have seen Illuminations, watching it from the seating area on the north end of the lagoon for the second time has only reiterated that I don't ever want to watch it from anywhere else. It was clearly designed to be viewed from this angle. In case you are wondering where I am talking about, at the end of the long path between Future World and the World Showcase, just between the two gift shops, there is an inclined area where you can sit and watch the show. As if it wasn't great always, it is SO much better from here. You can see ALL of the countries as they light up, and...well you just have to take my word for it and try it yourself. It's a popular spot so get there by 8:30.

9) The Land Food Court (Sunshine Seasons) - If you are ever in Epcot and looking for a healthy but tasty counter service burger alternative, this is the place to visit. The food is very high quality and it's not terribly busy...mostly just people holding a Soarin' Fast Pass. I don't know if they serve the veggies that are actually grown there like the Garden Grill does, but they tasted very fresh. We actually ate breakfast AND lunch there. This place has a selection as varied as what you would find at most of the resort food courts.

10) Space Mountain - I only mention it because it's about to close for almost an entire year, and when it re-opens it will supposedly be like a brand new attraction, although I'm told the track will have the same layout. I'm anxious to see the improvements, but thought it worth mentioning that I took one last ride on the original. I think the most significant changes will be new ride vehicles and a new queue that takes advantage of more of the interior space...similar to how it was before Fast Pass. I would also expect to see some kind of automatic gate on the load platform, similar to Coaster or Everest.

11) The American Adventure - I had never done this, so was glad to get to finally. It was cool...some of the best animatronics I have seen, but like the Hall of Presidents, half the audience was snoring. Getting to hear the acapella group Voices of Liberty before the show was a nice treat.

12) Extra Magic Hours - Fun, but not the same as E-Ride nights. Just too crowded, but again worth it because it does offer shorter wait times, and gives you more time in the midldle of the day to hang out by the pool.

Anyway I think that's about it. I'll post some pics soon.

I finally got my hands on a Yamaha LS9 digital mixing console this week. We purchased one at the church for use at our new service in the Fellowship Hall that will begin late next month. Because it's a contemporary service and because the space is used for different events throughout the week, a digital board was a must, and ever since I fell in love with the M7 we put in the sanctuary two years ago, I've been itching to give it's little sister a test run.

Let me start by saying that while neither console is perfect, it's obvious to me that Yamaha has been listening to user feedback, as the LS9 boasts some new features that the M7 is lacking (nothing that couldn't be remedied by a software update). There are some things about the M7 that I miss, but the LS9 still packs a lot of punch for it's footprint and price point.

The LS9 is available in two flavors, 16 and 32, although each can actually handle 32 and 64 simultaneous inputs respectively thanks to expansion card slots. Digital snake anyone? Yamaha already thought of that, and just this week they've released a compatible remote-controlled head-amp/input-output stage box that can link back to either console via EtherSound (see the SB168es). Way cool. I'm instantly having visions of unlimited audio splits and a campus-wide audio network. Did I mention mixing for broadcast, multi-track DAW audio recording?

So the LS9 doesn't have a touch screen interface. I'll be quite honest here, this makes it a pain in the rear to get to some of the console's functions. Even things like input patching, engaging the high pass filter, and assigning a channel to main mix busses take some navigation using the 5-way cursor pad. This will take a little getting used to, but once you've logged a few hours on the board should start to come faster. Every function just isn't going to be two key presses away as with the M7. Of course any of these could be assigned to a user defined key, but with only 12 of them, you may find that you use them up rather quickly. Would I gladly pay more for touch screen capabilites? You bet, but having a PC or laptop handy with Studio Manager installed can speed up some tasks. I suspect within a few years as this service grows, we'll upgrade this new LS9-32 to an M7CL-32 and move the LS9 to another venue within the church.

When you think about what components you might find in a typical front-of-house audio rack, the list is long and can be expansive. There are compressors, gates, de-essers, reverbs, delays, 31-band EQs...the LS9 (like all good digital boards) has all of this covered, saving you not only valuable space in the equipment trailer, but the hundeds or thousands of dollards it would costs to purchase said equipment, rack it up, and wire it in. Still the one thing (or two things) that most digital consoles lack is the ability to record and/or playback audio to and from a FOH source, so most engineers carry along an iPod or CD player. This is no more with the LS9. MP3 playback and recording via any USB device comes built in. How lovely, it has a built in iPod. They really thought of everything.

So what doesn't it have? There are no DCAs. I had no problem with this once I learned that channels can be easily linked, and then an individual channel level within a linked group can be quickly adjusted on the fly by pressing and holding that channel's select button. I see myself using this feature a lot. Unlike the M7, which has the ability to feed it's 8 matricies from any channel, and LS9's matricies can only be fed from it's 16 aux busses or the stereo and mono main mixes. This is not a big deal since 16 is more than enough for a board this size, and this is the way matricies were really designed to be used anyway. The system this board is being installed with will be stereo FOH with zone mono wings on the far left and right sides, so feeding the zones with a matrix is the perfect solution. If you are dead-set on using groups, it's easy enough to set one up on a post-fade aux, and the master can be mixed on the Master Send page or assigned to a fader on the custom page.

The EQ section is a little lacking. Only 3 encoders and 4 buttons cover a 4-band, fully parametric EQ. I though this would be difficult to use at first, but it suprisingly isn't. The LS9 also keeps one of my favorite features from the M7, send on faders mixing, and even adds 31 band EQ on faders. Just spectacular.

I was able to get the console up and running pretty quickly. Within 5 minutes I had a condensor mic patched in and was making MP3 voice over recordings to a flash drive. Being able to setup scenes ahead of time in Studio Manager will be a big time saver as we implement our new and existing services on this board, and having the ability to tweak mixes from anywhere in the room on a wireless tablet PC will also be a plus. If you land your hands on one of these baby's, be sure the check out the cool training videos Yamaha has on their web site: http://www.yamahaproaudio.com.

All that said, I hope Yamaha will keep listening, because while these consoles are great, there are still a few tweaks I would make to get them near perfect.

1) Mute Groups - Unless a mute group master is assigned to a User Defined Key, there is no way to engage or disengage it (except through Studio Manager). This can be obnoxious if you frequently switch between users and those users don't have the same UDK configuration. I would also change the way mute groups work altogether. Currently when you press the mute master, it either engages or disengages the mutes on all of the channels assigned to that group. An individual channel light with flash indicating that that channel is on at the channel level but muted at the group level. This gives you the ability to mute a channel at any time, regardless of the status of any group it is assigned to, but what it does NOT give you is the ability to un-mute that channel at any time. For example, if I have my entire praise band on one mute group, and that group is muted, but I wanted to unmute the praise leader without unmuting the rest of the group, I would have to go in and remove him from that group. Not something I want to do in the middle of a worship service. Instead I should be able to just unmute him as normal, regardless of the status of any mute groups he is assigned to.

Now if you have used these consoles I know what you are thinking, that this defeats the purpose of mute groups. Well I have a fix for that too: a two-state mute master. You tap it once and it mutes all the channels in a group, regardless of their previous state. If you press and hold it, it unmutes all channels in that group, again regardless of their previous state. The same could apply at the channel level. You press and hold the ON key, and it over-rides the group and allows you to unmute the channel.

2) USB Storage - I like the idea, but I don't like Yamaha's implementation of it. Basically you can read or write two types of files. A scene file which stores all of the console's scenes and settings, and a user file which stores an individuals preferences and permissions, as well as authenticates that user to the console. Sounds great, right? Here's the problem: when you load a scene file from the USB stick, it overwrites all of the other scenes already stored in the console's internal memory. So if you didn't have those scenes backed up...too bad. The main issue I have with the user file is that the settings travel with the jump drive. I've never actually tested this theory, but what's to keep me from creating a user key with administrative priviledges and then using it on an entirely different console? Additionally, what if I want to change a user's privledges and/or distribute new scene files to them? That means I have to collect all of their drives and then re-distrubute. Not a fun task. I think the idea here is that you could load a basic scene and user key onto a drive, and then an inexperienced user (like, say, an usher) could just pop the key in, power on the console, and bam a default scene is loaded that has the pulpit mic turned on and ready to go. Not a far fetched scenario at all, but too limiting for other situations.

So the changes I propose are this: allow me to load a USB scene file along side my internal scene files as opposed to overwiriting them. Better yet, allow me to load individual scenes rather than an entire library. Wish #2, keep the individual's preferences and settings stored in the console memory, and then just use the key to authenticate, or allow them to use a password if in case they lose or don't have their key.

3) Channel Labeling - The internal channel labels on the LS9 are almost useless except when doing setup. This means that like the M7 hard labeling is still a must, although at least with the M7 you can see the channel names on the screen when you use CentraLogic. A challenge with the LS9 that you don't face with the M7 is that there are 4 pages that have to be labelled, which can cause things to get cluttered on the console surface real quick. One thing you don't get is an abundance of label space around the User Defined Keys and the Aux Send buttons. It would be handy if Yamaha could come out with some disposable overlays and computer templates to make re-labeling when switching between major scenes more streamlined. For now I will keep using my handy-dandy Brother QL-570 label printer, which has the ability to print long strips of labels from pretty much any file format.

Beyond those two major issues there is very little to complain about on these boards. They look slick, they are very user friendly to operate, and they seem entirely durable. I haven't taken either out on the road yet, but something tells me they would hold up just fine. We paid just under $10,000 for the LS9-32, and from what I hear you can get your hands on an LS9-16 for less than half of that. Here's the best part about the 16, it mounts in a standard 19" rack. Sign me up for 3. This console is about to start popping up everywhere, and I don't just mean in churches and theme parks. Start looking for them in clubs, smaller venues, regional sound companies, and even band's private PAs. 

Jeremy Leff is the Coordinator of Media & Technology at Auburn United Methodist Church in Auburn, Alabama. He can be reached at Jeremy.Leff@aumc.net.
 

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