IM8 Sounds Great in Michigan

Tish Kreiter works the IM8-40 during a live broadcast of Michael Feldman's Whad' Ya Know? at the Wharton Center for the Performing Arts.

LAINGSBURG, Mich.—Jeff Kreiter, audio department head at the four-stage Wharton Center for Performing Arts at Michigan State University, gets around. He is also the main man at Rising Sun Audio in Laingsburg, Mich., which provides live sound reinforcement for several events, including the Great Lakes Folk Festival at Michigan State, the Caribbean Festival at Lansing Community College and the Saline Celtic Festival.

To help with his monitor mixes at the festival gigs, Kreiter recently bought a Yamaha IM8-40 analog mixing console, partly because he enjoys the warm sound of analog and because it represents a good value, he said.

In addition to singling out the board's one knob compression, parametric EQ and USB input, which he sends straight to a laptop so he can archive performances and sound settings, he likes the fact that the auxiliaries are controlled by faders rather than rotary knobs.

"Everybody is impressed with it," he said. "It's good to see someone putting out a console for the money with the kind of features the IM8 has."

He also mentioned that the numerous pre and post selectable auxiliaries are noteworthy, along with the extra stereo returns and their intuitive layout. At the Great Lakes festival, he covered four stages at once and having 40 inputs helped; when a world music band played over two days, Kreiter had enough room to set aside a portion of the board just for their use.

Though he may get a digital board eventually, there's no rush. The IM8 serves his purposes better, he said, and he may end up buying two more. "A lot of road shows come through the Wharton Center and I've seen a lot of boards, but none of my clients are screaming for digital consoles," he said. "Most engineers aren't up on running them."

Despite undergoing an $18.5 million renovation, the Wharton Center still relies on older consoles. "When they get a new one for the concert auditorium, I'm going to recommend they get an IM8," he said.