By George, It's The Yamaha LS9!

Taking in a wide variety of venues, including five consecutive nights at London's Shaw Theatre, former Culture Club frontman Boy George spent most of February wowing UK venues on his Songs That Make You Dance And Cry tour.

Accompanying front of house engineer Jimmy Sarikas throughout has been a Yamaha LS9-32 console, which was not only mixing the auditorium sound, but also doing two completely separate sets of recordings of every show.

Jimmy first came across the LS9 in his role as resident sound engineer at London's Soho Revue Bar, a venue which features a wide range of live music and entertainment, including music industry-hosted events.

"Promoters were booking the venue to do multi-band functions, where I was doing both monitors and FOH from the same console," says Jimmy.

"The changeovers between bands obviously have to be very slick and the bands could vary enormously. When you're mixing on an analogue console, changing over quickly from a four piece band to an eight or nine piece was very demanding. With just me doing it, I had to keep running from the FOH position to the stage and back."

The venue's owners were persuaded to invest in a Yamaha LS9 in the summer of 2007 and Jimmy hasn't looked back since.

"The LS9 was a lifesaver!" he says. "With being able to patch everything as scenes and just recall band settings it solved the changeover problems at a stroke. Now it's done in a fraction of the time and I can concentrate fully on mixing each performance, not having half a mind on the next changeover."

Despite having first met Boy George 20 years ago and worked with him on a number of projects, this is the first of his tours that Jimmy has been the FOH engineer on. And the first piece of equipment he requested was the Yamaha LS9-32.

"I chose it for the same reasons as I chose it for the Revue Bar," he says. "It's a great desk for having the best of both the analogue and digital worlds. I have to mix on the fly because George never sticks to the set list, so I can change things throughout the show but then store them."

"With analogue desks you've always got the problem that controls will be moved by the time you set up the next day, whereas with the LS9 I simply recall the show file and things are exactly as I saved them. And with the wide variety of different venues we were playing in, it was a godsend."

"In fact the last gig was at the Buxton Festival and I asked them to take out a major analogue board, complete with full outboard racks, and put in an LS9!"

But Jimmy and the show's system tech Steve Bunting are using the console for more than the FOH mix - at the same time it's being used to record two completely separate mixes of every show.

The touring band comprises six members - drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, two backing vocalists and, of course, George - all of which Jimmy and Steve managed to bring down to just 24 channels through the console. This was for the primary recording, to an Alesis HD24 hard disk recorder via a pair of Yamaha MY16 mLan cards.

At the same time, each show was also being recorded as a stereo mix direct to a USB stick, through the LS9's internal recorder.

"I used the USB recording as a reference, to check which of the performances would be the best for George's producer to mix down the digital 24 track recording from, for possible release," says Jimmy.

However, this stereo recording also had a second purpose - being used for soundchecks, meaning that the band didn't need to be involved.

"The USB recording facility meant we got soundchecks down to about 15-20 minutes maximum," Jimmy continues. "Which people like, of course. And if you're touring with the PA and console you're quids in - the only thing that changes is the room acoustics."

"I enjoyed the benefit of being able to recall a mix from the most similar room," adds Steve. "So we had a number of saved mixes for large reverberant spaces - such as Nottingham Royal Concert Hall - and some for small dry spaces, such as the Orchard Theatre in Dartford."

In order to tweak the system to take account of each venue's acoustics, Steve was equipped with an Apple Macbook laptop with a Belkin wireless connection, running Yamaha's Studio Manager software. This allowed him to roam freely around each venue and adjust the system so that every seat enjoyed high quality sound.

"For me personally, it's been an enjoyable experience not having to traipse up and down staircases time and time again!" smiles Steve. "Speaking as a system technician I found that, after setting up the system equalisation, Jimmy was been able to walk in and have a quick soundcheck without having to tweak too much at all. Consequently, the sound from venue to venue was reasonably consistent."

Jimmy Sarikas was certainly happy with the results, as he contemplated resuming his connection with the LS9 at the Soho Revue Bar.

"I love the LS9, it's a great tool that's both portable and cost-effective. It's a lot of console for little money," he says.

Steve adds: "I've always found the sound quality of the LS9 to be excellent at such a price-point, as well as the sound quality and usability of the effects.

"As an FOH desk, I've found it to be very user friendly, everything required by the band engineer is easy to find quickly and does not require multiple button presses, while the functions that are not needed in the heat of the gig are the ones hidden away a bit more.

"It certainly made my life easier - not just in it's capabilities but it's compact size and weight, which is ideal for a theatre tour!"