Yamaha Has The Last Laugh With Sara Kroos
Award-winning comedienne Sara Kroos is a familiar face on stage and screen in the Netherlands, enjoying a high level of popularity thanks to regular television appearances and live tours. Her current tour is titled Van Jewelste and features a Yamaha CL1 digital mixing system.
The 90 minute show is a mixture of dialogue and songs, with Sara playing piano accompanied by Rutger Hoorn on drums. Having used rented mixing consoles up until now, Sara and mix engineer Jan Heideveld felt it was time to have their own system.
“Sara has 150 live shows coming up in the next 18 months, so we felt it was worthwhile to invest in a system that would tour with us,” says Jan, an experienced sound designer and mixing engineer, who has worked with Sara on her last two tours.
After an ‘audio shootout’ of several different digital consoles, they chose the CL1 for its sound quality, functionality and ease of use. Providing inputs and outputs for the CL1 are four R-series units, a Rio1608-D, two Ri8-Ds and an Ro8-D. Complementing the CL system is a Shure ULXD4D, used as a receiver for Sara’s handheld and headset microphones, while a pair of Yamaha DXR10s are used as stage monitors.
“When we did the shootout I really liked the neutral sound of the CL series. I knew it would deliver a perfect starting point to balance everything and to fine tune the individual sources, using the onboard effects and Premium Rack,” says Jan.
He starts at each venue with a pre-programmed basic setup, but he prefers to mix the shows manually. “The show doesn’t require major dynamic changes of settings and I like to mix on the fly,” he says. “Currently I use the Neve Portico EQ and LA2A on Sara’s voice. But I am still getting to know all the effects.
“The setup is a little bigger than these type of tours would usually need. But, because we almost always use the house PA system, I can be very flexible and have all the matrixes available to interface to the system, if needed.”
He continues, “Another big advantage of the CL1 is the selected channel. All the important parameters are directly available next to the screen. I find that very important, especially for the EQ section.”
A laptop is used to record the shows and optionally control the console using Yamaha’s CL Editor software, while an iPad running StageMix is used as a system controller or to soundcheck the monitors.
“Another important factor for us was that using Dante makes the system future-proof - the network allows complete freedom of setup and adding extra devices in the future will be easy,” Jan adds. “Currently the Rio1608-D and Ro8-D are in one rack together with the ULXD, and both Ri8-Ds are close to the drums. Everything is conveniently daisy chained together.”
Of course the most important factor for any audio system is that it sounds good. And both Jan and the artists are very pleased.
“The CL1 translates perfectly what’s actually happening on stage. It has a neutral sound and, by using the onboard processing, it’s easy to add some colour to it,” says Jan. “In addition, the Shure is a great system. It sounds really good, has a fantastic battery life and is easy to integrate using Dante, while Sara is very happy with the DXR10s - they are small, lightweight and sound great.”
