Red Theater
Yamaha upgrades NYU Abu Dhabi
The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) has implemented two Yamaha RIVAGE PM5s, provided by Thomsun Trading, as part of a major sound upgrade of its three performance spaces.
A focal point of the Abu Dhabi campus is the NYUAD Arts Center, home to the theatre, music, film and new media, visual arts and interactive media departments. The Arts Center includes three performance venues, a project gallery, rehearsal rooms, film editing studios, classrooms and a workshop. As well as showcasing music, theatre, dance, film, poetry, family and interdisciplinary productions by students, faculties and the local community, it presents public performances by professional artists from around the world.
The 685-seat Red Theater is the largest venue of the three and includes a large stage with sprung floor, lighting, digital and 35mm projection capabilities, an orchestra pit and adjustable acoustic panels.
The flexible Black Box theatre has an audience capacity of up to 300. With full lighting and sound reinforcement, it can accommodate a range of configurations for music, dance, theatre and multidisciplinary performance. Meanwhile, the Blue Hall is an intimate, 150-capacity concert hall with a sprung wood floor stage and digital projection for film and video. It is ideal for concerts, small scale dance performances, readings, panel conversations and more.
The Arts Centre previously featured a Yamaha system, including CL5 and TF-Rack digital mixers, plus a Rio3224-D I/O rack. Although the CL5 offered a substantial input mixing capacity, the Arts Centre was facing the challenge of the escalating scale and complexity of events.
Kalith Ahamed of Yamaha Music Gulf explained it was “running short of inputs, outputs and mix matrices. As the venue's popularity and the ambition of its programming has increased, so has the demand for more extensive audio routing and processing, which was pushing the existing system beyond its capabilities.”
After evaluating various options, the Arts Center’s audio team settled on a pair of Yamaha RIVAGE PM5 digital mixing systems, supplied by Dubai-based Thomsun Trading. It was reported that the new systems satisfied their requirements, as well as provided a futureproof, versatile and reliable solution that is internationally accepted by sound engineers.
The interface between Yamaha’s TWINLANe digital audio protocol – which allows it to transmit up to 400 audio channels through a single optical cable – and the Arts Center’s existing Dante network mean the RIVAGE PM5 systems can be moved between the venues, according to the specific event requirements and unique acoustic needs of each space.
“A key advantage of the RIVAGE PM5 is its relatively lighter weight, compared to its impressive feature set,” noted Ahamed. “This significantly benefits the in-house technical staff, making the systems easier for engineers to handle, transport and set up between the different theatres, enhancing operational efficiency and allowing for quicker changeovers between productions.”
Ahamed added that the Theater mode has made a notable difference in the preperation and pre-production of theatre shows, while the hybrid mic preamps with Rupert Neve Designs SILK processing and the plug-ins capacity and quality have lifted the sound quality of productions to a “new level”.
“The long-term reliability of Yamaha equipment and its ability to plug into the Dante network has also meant that the Arts Center has kept the previous CL5/TF-Rack based system for use on smaller productions,” he concluded. “It highlights how Yamaha audio systems always maximise the return on investment.”
