Conrad St. Clair is one of the many musicians involved in the studio and live project Kicksville (there are around 58 contributors to this gigantic musical entity). A fan and pratcitioner of the Soctric dialoge, St. Clair has been sharing his thoughts with Gearwire re: a variety of gear. This time he waxes romantic about the Yamaha LS9-32.

You say you use this board in an "unusual way." Tell me about how you use it.

The first and most obvious thing is that the LS9-32 is on stage with us, since we run all audio from the stage as part of the show (we even have a video camera focused on it so the audience can see the faders get wiggled around by the automation). Beyond that, it's all about signal routing and automation. The Kicksville show runs 76 or so inputs, up to 10 stereo outputs to FOH, a stereo record / broadcast feed, four stereo monitor "bed" sends, and a host of direct outs so individual musicians can customize said monitor mixes. We are pretty much maxing out the LS9-32's I/O, using it as both a front-of-house and monitor mixer, as well as a multiple-destination mic splitter.

Because Kicksville started as a studio project, that made it a tricky proposition to reproduce our material live. We wanted the kind of control over our live mix that we have in the studio, not to mention that our songs range from Ministry-like techno to Malian blues. To deal with those issues, the dynamic console automation built into our show is extensive: fader, mute, pan, monitor levels, EQ, effects, routing . . . pretty much everything. I load the show file, and from there on out, the LS9 is controlled by our main computer. Most of the time, I don't have to touch the console the entire performance. We did a ridiculous amount of work in the studio and in production rehearsals to really work things out -- the only reason we send more than a stereo mix to FOH is to give our engineer the ability to deal with venue acoustics, PA system weirdness, etc.

Given how you use it, what do you recommend about the LS9-32?

For the price, there's really nothing else in its class as far as I/O, DSP, and audio quality. . . and it's built like a tank. Reliability is crucial considering that if the main audio console dies, our show is dead in the water. Then there's the related factor that if the console does die in the middle of a tour, the LS9-32 is becoming so common that we can rent one in almost any market. There's also the matter of physical size since it's on stage with us, and the LS9-32 has an incredibly small footprint. And finally, since there's so much automation, we needed a console with extensive and configurable MIDI capabilities. We considered a number of other consoles like the Yamaha M7CL and the Allen & Heath iLive, but in the end, the only one that fit all our needs was the LS9-32. Well, most of our needs, anyway . . . we also have two Yamaha 01V96 consoles on stage to create input submixes and additional monitor mixes.

What is the best feature, in general (outside YOUR use for it), about the LS9?

Definitely its price to features / quality ratio.

Is there anything you would change, add or subtract from this board?

Yes -- three big things are missing, actually. One thing is probably peculiar to our situation, but the other two are much broader issues. Our original sound design called for a console with at least 24 mix busses, not counting the stereo and mono busses. The LS9-32 only has 16 mix busses, plus eight matrix outs (which can only be fed from the mix busses). That means we have to jump through some hoops to get signals where they need to go, and it's the main reason why we have to have the secondary consoles on stage. If the LS9-32 had 24 busses, or you could send an input channel directly to the matrix outs like you can on the Yamaha M7CL, our monitor routing would be far less complicated.

The second major thing is the lack of per channel delays, which is really puzzling considering all of Yamaha's other digital consoles (except the M7) have that feature. You can delay the 16 physical outputs, but not input channels or mix busses. In live sound, often what seems to be an EQ problem is really an arrival time problem, and being able to compensate for that has always been one of the advantages (to me) of digital consoles. For us, since our stage plot is pretty specific, having per channel delays would allow me to time align our downstage vocal mics to the drum kit to minimize phase issues.

Third, there really, really should be an option to set a channel's direct out to POST-fader. For example, that would make automation much easier, since I wouldn't have to use separate controller messages for a channel's fader level and its direct level.

These all seem like relatively straightforward software implementations -- certainly the last two things I mentioned could be addressed fairly easily. Pretty please, Yamaha software gurus?

One other thing that would be really nice would be a third expansion slot for I/O cards, but at the price point Yamaha is going for, I can certainly understand why that might be a pipe dream.

Who would you recommend this board to? Who might want to steer clear of it?

I'd recommend the LS9 to anyone in the pro audio business who needs a fully-featured but inexpensive digital console: it's reliable, powerful, compact, the price is right, and it sounds good. If you need more than 72 input channels or 16 bus outs + 8 matrix outs, or you have the cash to blow on a Midas PRO6, then you might want to look elsewhere.

Stay tuned for summer 2009 tour dates from Madison, WI's own Kicksville and be sure to check out their quite literally spectacular live show.