YAMAHA DM2000 'MIXES IT UP' AT CANNES

—Small Digital Console Creates Big Production—

BUENA PARK, CA (July 8, 2002)—The new DreamWorks film, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, galloped off the screen at a special one-night-only, out-of-competition screening at the Grand Theatre Lumiere at The 55th Annual Cannes Film Festival, with a live performance of the musical score by Bryan Adams and Hans Zimmer accompanying the digitally-projected movie.

The new Yamaha DM2000 Digital Production Console hitched up to the soundtrack and made its debut at the screening, when during the final musical rehearsal, technical difficulties resulted in its recruitment.

"The house console developed all sorts of hums and buzzes on all of its buses, so the festival production team used one of the extra DM2000s we had," explains Slamm Andrews, staff engineer at Zimmer's Media Ventures Studios (who also doubles as a supervising music editor on the film). "That worked out very, very well for the show."

Front of house engineer Jody Perpick used the DM2000 to mix music from the three-piece Bryan Adams band consisting of Adams, Keith Scott and Mickey Curry, plus a ten-piece group of musicians which included Zimmer, Jim Dooley, Trevor Morris, guitarist Heitor Pereira and percussionist Louis Conte.

All onboard effects of the DM2000s were utilized. Andrews blended the feed from the Adams/Zimmer band mix with the dialog and effects from the film. "We had 24 inputs, including mics and DI's," he explains. "For the show, there was a DM2000 pulling the live house feeds of the band playing, with a digital out from that DM2000 into the second DM2000 where I was mixing. My console had all the film elements: dialogue, sound effects, print master, and a complete safety of everything, which plugged right into the Dolby digital inputs going straight to the screen."

The Spirit soundtrack was mixed in true 5.1 Surround. The DM2000 surround features include panning, joystick, monitoring, bass management, and a downmix matrix, which enables L-C-R-S and stereo mix monitoring for 5.1; multiple 5.1 stem mixes can also be handled.

"With the picture being animated, you need to 'keep things on the screen,' perspective-wise," Andrews recalls. "We were a bit apprehensive because we had a live vocal mic on stage for Bryan which was ten feet in front of the screen. We ended up being able to fold his vocals and the score into the screen until the end credits started rolling, then we were able to massage the music out to the live fill of the house."

The Yamaha DM2000 integrates with digital audio workstations and provides extensive support for DigiDesign ProTools®. Bundled Yamaha Studio Manager Software is compatible with Macintosh and Windows platforms. "We use ProTools®, but for the show, I used a laptop running ProTools® as back-up," Andrews explains. "The eight outs were for any additional editing we needed to do. I also had two Tascam MX2424s plugged into the main desk, plus a master and a safety locked up to time code coming off of the digital projector.

"About three days before [Cannes], Hans' DM2000 for Media Ventures arrived," he continues. "Hans is a big Yamaha 02R user, so the user interface is familiar to us. I knew it had all the required automation features. Plus, it chases time code and has groups, so it just made the most sense to me. It's all digital—so no hums and buzzes.

"The DM2000 gives Hans all the patching and everything else that he needs — and it sounds good," says Andrews about Zimmer's feelings toward the digital console. Zimmer will soon remodel his studio at his state of the art Media Ventures in Santa Monica (CA), removing his current system and replacing it with the DM2000.

The DM2000 work surface houses a 22 x 8 (4-stereo) matrix, channel name display and 16 user-defined keys. All inputs, outputs, effects and channel inserts can be assigned to any console channel or output via a versatile patching system; a direct out function routes signal from any input to any other digital or analog output.

Users can manipulate up to eight internal multi-effects processors simultaneously, which can be assigned to an aux bus for sends, or inserted directly into any input channel. Dedicated cascade ports enable two DM2000s to function in tandem, providing a maximum of 192 input channels.

"With touch sensitive faders and 96 channels with sample rate conversion, the DM2000 is a professional console," notes Zimmer.

For more information, contact Yamaha Corporation of America, Commercial Audio Systems Division, P.O. Box 6600, Buena Park, CA 90622, telephone 714-522-9011, email infostation@yamaha.com or visit www.yamaha.com/proaudio.