Sometimes it needs a good, old-fashioned head-to-head test of products for a customer to see which is the best. Of course there is always the risk that the ‘wrong’ one will win! But if a product has the inherent quality of Yamaha’s brand new T5n amplifiers, the result is unlikely to be in doubt!
Such a situation happened in Italy recently, when Lombardi Service of Termoli did an A/B test using the company’s Adamson line array, with Yamaha T5n amplifiers on one side and the amplifiers usually used with Adamson systems on the other.
For the duration of the test, three T5n amplifiers were installed to amplify four Adamson Y18 cabinets in the left hand array of the rig, while the other amplifiers were used to power four cabinets in the right hand array. All cabling and settings were exactly the same on each side and all the other cabinets and subs were muted.
Present at the test was Luca Nobilini of Lombardi Service, leading Italian front of house / recording engineer Toni Soddu and Yamaha’s Wouter Verkuijl.
The trio conducted a number of tests, including playing CDs and individual (live) band instruments through the system, muting various frequencies and altogether giving both sets of amplifiers a thorough workout.
“On playing a CD through the system, the difference was clear,” says Wouter. “It seemed like the left side of the system was producing real music that came from a phantom source some metres in front of the actual line array while, on the right hand side, the music clearly came from the cabinets. Toni Soddu was astonished by the initial results!”
Soddu then asked the backing band of Italian singer/songwriter Gigi D’Alessio to play their instruments one by one, acoustic guitar, non-distorted guitar, organ, piano and percussion.
“Every time we got the same result: the left side was clearly more natural, closer by, you heard the instrument instead of the cabinets,” says Wouter.
Luca Noblini’s response to the test was unequivocal. "The difference is much bigger than I could imagine,” he said. “The power of the T5n is bigger, which is nice, but more important to me is the better sound quality of the Yamaha amps! We have found something in our Adamson that we weren't aware of before."
Toni Soddu, meanwhile, said "I don't need more try-outs with the T5n, this first impression today is enough for me."
It is said that first impressions last. And if Yamaha’s T5n amplifiers give a leading sound engineer such a good first impression, it seems certain that they can look forward to impressing many more!
