New York, NY (April 6, 2023)—Yamaha Pro Audio launched its first post-pandemic mixing consoles today with the introduction of the DM3 Series—a move that additionally served notice that the brand’s digital desk production was essentially back at pre-pandemic levels.
“Yamaha has experienced some challenges with supply chain over the past couple of years, but [the issues have been] resolved in a lot of areas now,” Preston Gray, Marketing Director – Pro Audio, told Mix. Yamaha has resumed full production of its CL Series digital mixers, QL Series digital mixing consoles and RIO I/O racks, in addition to developing a number of new products set to debut at NAMM and InfoComm this year.
The company’s new DM3 Series kicks off with a pair of 22-channel ultra-compact digital mixing consoles—the DM3-D ($1,999) and DM3 Standard ($1,699). The DM3-D has the added feature of supporting Audinate’s Dante protocol, allowing it to tie into a Dante audio network, but the desks are otherwise identical, providing users with 16 mono, one stereo and two FX Return input mixing channels, as well as a half-dozen Mix Send, two FX Send, one stereo and two matrix output mixing channels. Also onboard are 18 effects; a full-color 9-inch touchscreen; a dark mode and some features intended to make it useful outside of live sound—namely, enabling it to be used in recording situations as a DAW remote control.
“It’s got a USB interface on it, so it’ll allow musicians to not only use it live, but also bring it back home with them and track their band and their projects in the studio as well,” said Gray. “We’re excited about the versatility of the product, and how that will help empower musicians.”
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The introduction of new consoles comes on the heels of revived CL, QL and RIO production. “The production of our most popular and high-performing product lines…have fully resumed from a factory production standpoint, and we’re currently accepting new orders on those,” said Gray. “We’ve been able to achieve that by working very closely with the factories [on] their supply chain [so as] to use parts that have a more stable supply situation. It’s kept the factory busy, but we’re on a good track and have fully resumed production on those at this point.”
Production on the company’s flagship Rivage consoles is still constrained due to supply challenges, he cautioned, adding that the desks remain in production as the company catches up: “We actually never closed the order desk on any of our consoles; we were successful in taking and shipping orders of digital consoles all through 2022. We couldn’t keep up with the surging demand that we saw in the live entertainment market [so] we were the first ones to make that proactive decision to announce the production suspension of digital consoles to channel partners. We were creative in that we were able to find and supply consoles throughout 2022; that allowed us to navigate some of those global component shortages and we still shipped consoles every single month in 2022.”
With many of those challenges put to rest, the Yamaha Pro Audio team finds itself looking forward to highlighting its new offerings, said Gray: “We’re stoked to be able to share them with everyone at NAMM and InfoComm.”
