Yamaha PM1D and AI8 Input Boxes Cover Long, Crazy Cable Run at Cumberland County Civic Center
BUENA PARK, Calif. — CSP Mobile Productions of Saco, Maine recently supplied both audio and video remote trucks to Yahoo! Music to record live concert footage featuring Fergie (Stacey Ferguson of the Black Eyed Peas) performing her new single, "London Bridge," as well as The Pussycat Dolls performing at the Cumberland County Civic Center in Portland, Maine.
CSP Mobile Unit
CSP's Unit 6 digital audio truck features one of the first PM1D digital consoles ever installed in a remote record/broadcast vehicle. Unit 6 recorded 52-tracks of audio with a considerably long cable run. "A potential problem at this particular venue is a long, crazy cable run from the stage to the street where we park the truck," says Musmix's Lance Vardis, audio mixer for CSP Unit 6. "The run is about 500 feet and goes through a building, a basement, tunnels, and machine rooms, with video camera lines following the same path." (CSP's Unit 3 video truck ISO'd six cameras of SDI 16:9 video for both performances). "There's no way we could get 64 discrete mic lines back to the truck over analog lines without introducing noise into the signal."
Part of CSP's standard rig and solution to this type of problem, not uncommon to many remote trucks, is a stage rack with four Yamaha AI8 input boxes running 64 channels of LMY2-ML mic pre's. Signals are delivered back to the truck via four Yamaha digital copper interconnects (for runs of up to 660 feet). "If we want to use the B side of those preamps, we can get 128 channels," adds Vardis. "In this situation, having pristine audio coming back from the stage over that signal route is hugely important."
James Kelly (right), audio engineer for Yahoo Music with Lance Vardis, mixer in Digital Audio Unit 6
The "London Bridge" concert video is available as an A&M/Interscope/Geffen online exclusive at music.yahoo.com in the Pepsi Smash section of the site. Concert video of artists The Pussycat Dolls is intended for future release on DVD and as web content.
