Following a demonstration at their warehouse earlier in the year Adlib Audio had no hesitation in ordering the new Yamaha PM5D. Adlib are growing force in the Pro Audio touring industry, their recent acclaimed outing with David Bowie confirming their rightful position in the market place; Director Dave Kay, out with the PM5D on the current Scissor Sisters tour, explained the background to this significant purchase.

“For the Scissor Sisters this is their first tour carrying production, back in May when we were originally approached to look after their audio needs they were about to embark on their first festival season run and otherwise they were touring in venues with house PA systems.”
It’s amazing to recall that at the start of 2004 no one in the UK had heard of the band, “and they broke here first”, revealed Kay. “Despite coming from New York they chose Europe as the place to start, in fact their first album was only released in the States this July.”
After opening shows for Duran Duran and subsequently for Elton John, Dave Kay was introduced to the PM5D by Yamaha, “It’s the first digital desk we’ve seen that looks really easy to use,” he said, “very straight forward. As a company what we wanted was a desk that we could slot in instead of an analogue board without having to think about a new multicore or other peripherals. The packaging was also attractive, just a PSU and a desk - nothing else to plug in. Here with the Scissor Sisters we’ve just got the desk and the radio In Ear systems.” The PM5D is being used to mix monitors on this tour, operated by Ben Booker.
“I’ve had a go with the desk and I love the simplicity of it all,” added Kay. “Would I like to use it front of house? Well maybe by Christmas we’ll be doing a tour with a 5D at each end of the multicore.”
Adlib did in fact buy two PM5D’s, the second is presently touring with Embrace, that’s quite a big financial commitment? “Well actually no, price wise a desk comes in at a lot less than a Heritage 3000, and of course they’re very multi-purpose. We elected to buy the RH version, with the excellent input amps developed for the PM5000. The price difference between the RH and the standard 5D is not that great, but most importantly it keeps our hire stock consistent; if you have two versions of the same desk in your inventory it’s inevitable that sometime you’ll run into a situation where the desk you want is out and the variant in stock is not what your client wants. There were other factors that influenced our purchase decision, because of the size of the desk it’s realistic to take it out on a back-line only tour where it has to fit in a van with the rest of the gear, but simplicity of operation was the key for me.”
Ben Booker was just nine shows into the tour, but already he appears to be fully conversant with his PM5D, “Well I did read the manual while on the train travelling to the first show,” he said. Not a lot of engineers will do that, preferring to work their way through a desk and refer to the manual when they can’t figure something out; did he see any advantages? “Well considering I’d had just an hour on the desk in the warehouse it made sense, but I have my own Yamaha O2R so much of the desk operation was familiar, it’s all very understandable.”
“Things I discovered out the manual; well I like assigning the DCA section, I have the main vocal on every page. Jake the lead singer is on wedges and moves around the stage a lot; I can easily dial him into any of the wedges I have dotted around the stage. The point is I don’t have side fills, and the rest of the band don’t want a strong vocal sound near them, unless it’s necessary - this solution is easy.” Booker is fortunate, this is a very quiet stage, not only do most of the band use in ears, there’s no guitar amps on stage.
“There are other things to consider though; the bass guitar gets passed around between three of the band, one fingers, two use a pick, so I need a different EQ for each musician but I can keep the bass to one channel, just shift scene to scene as they swap around.”
Booker is keen on keeping control under single faders, “I also like the vertical stack function for faders, the stereo out from the piano for example; I have left and right level control under one fader, linked; it’s so easy.”
Nine shows in yet Booker has already discovered a useful function that’s not in the manual, “Some of the band are monitoring on wedges with the majority on IEM’s so to make it easier for me to listen to each type of output I have patched the master cue output back in to the two track analogue inputs. One fader is routed to my listening wedges and the other to my In Ears. I can check either type of monitoring with ease.”
With no outboard gear at all is Booker happy with the onboard dynamics and effects? “No problems, I’m just using a bit of reverb for the drums. I do compress absolutely everything, heavy compression on the ambient mics for In Ears, and I find them more than adequate. I have to say that after nine shows the thought of going back to an analogue desk doesn’t thrill me; I’d always take one of these, the PM5D’s just that much easier. I have time to think about what to do.”
Once the UK leg is complete the Scissor Sisters head off to the States where Kay will be calling upon the services of Firehouse Productions to support the tour. “Bryan Olson (Dir of Firehouse) stocks JBL VerTec PA the same as us and we have a good working relationship. They also bought two PM5D’s recently so we will hopefully be sourcing one from them whilst we are over there.”