Version Two, that is. It has been almost two years since the first shipments of the Yamaha 02R digital console. Since then Yamaha has also released the 03D, a smaller version of the digital console, but with software that wasn’t available in the 02R, such as surround sound mixing. Yamaha has also listened to its thousands of 02R customers and put together a wish list of features they would like to see in a new software revision. As of September ‘97, all 02Rs will ship with Version 2 operating software, and previous 02R owners can upgrade to Version 2 by purchasing an upgrade kit from their dealer.

To keep this thing short, I am going to have to assume that you already know what the 02R can do. I am just going to outline the new additions to the pile of features.

Surround Sound Mixing

The most obvious addition to the V2 software is the surround sound mixing. There are now additional pages under ROUTING that refer to various configurations of surround systems. 2+2 is set up to be left and right speakers in front and left and right speakers in the rear. 3+1 is your basic LCRS (Left Center Right Surround) configuration. 3+2+1 gets you into what is commonly referred to as 5.1 (read five-dot-one) format. 5.1 gives you left, center, and right in the front of the room, left and right rear speakers, and one subwoofer channel for a total of six channels of audio information.

For output monitoring you have choices. The first six buss outputs are used for the surround outputs. You can send to your monitors from the output of your destination recorder, you can listen to the outputs from an optional Analog I/O card, or you can route the busses to Aux Outputs and use them as monitor sources to feed the monitor amps.

The most innovative part of the surround sound addition is the panning configuration. When surround panning comes to mind, you automatically think of joysticks, or at the very minimum, a left right and front back pan control for each channel. With the V2 software Yamaha has implemented the “Panning Trajectory” approach. Panning of each individual channel is graphically displayed on the LCD screen as the representation of a room with speaker icons placed according to the surround model you are using. You can then select from a menu, various trajectories over which the sound will travel during a dynamic panning movement. In each case, you can decide what percentage of the signal will be routed to the center channel and how much the trajectory can be squashed in either the front back or left right direction. For 99.9% of your panning requirements, this system will work perfectly. For those occasions when you want a joystick input for dynamic panning that doesn’t fit a bezier trajectory, then Yamaha will offer a MIDI joystick. Remember, since everything on the 02R is automatable (is that a word?), you can pan one channel around, then change tracks and pan another one. On the LCD display by each speaker icon is audio level metering so you can always see exactly how much total signal is being routed to each speaker.

Routing

While we are on the subject of routing, there are some new additions in V2 that are very useful. The inputs to the console are in blocks of eight. In each of these blocks you can re-route the incoming signal to any other input. As an example, if you recorded the stereo guitar on channels one and three, you can re-route channel three to input two so that you can stereo link them together.

You can also re-route the Aux outs to Busses. This means that you can have Aux sends feeding digital busses so that effects sends can go digitally to your outboard reverbs that accept digital inputs.

Scene Memories And Automix

Scene memories are used to store the state of the entire console. The number of scene memories has been changed from 52 to 96.

In Automix, you now have extensive off-line editing of Automix information. You can erase or insert events at any time code location and move or copy events to another time code location. This works out great if you have mixed a song and then you went back and added two bars before the second chorus. You can just move the Automix data two bars later, starting at the second chorus, and push play. You can also choose to display only the channels or type of Automix events that you want to work with to keep the clutter to a minimum and avoid changing data that you don’t want to change. You can also trim a range of events off-line. If the vocal rides are perfect but just a little loud in the second chorus, then just trim them down a little. Time code addresses can be captured on the fly and new events inserted at the captured time.

Touch sensitive faders have now been added to Automix. If you turn this option on, then you don’t have to press the SELECT button in order to update a channel. If you start to move the fader, the Automix computer knows and automatically starts updating the mix information.

An additional check box on the Automix page allows you to update mix information to the end of the song when you stop the tape. Without this box checked, if you were lowering the level of a guitar and stopped the tape at the second chorus, from that point on the level of the guitar would return to the previous level. If you wanted to change the level to the end of the song, you would have to play the tape to the end with the guitar fader at the desired level. Now, with the END box checked, when you stop the tape the current fader level is written to the end of the tape.

MIDI Dump

On the MIDI page, you can now select more than one type of data at the same time. This means you could select all of the boxes and save the entire console at once with one continuous MIDI dump. If you mess around in this area, make sure you keep very good documentation of what you are dumping. When you send data back to the 02R it overwrites existing data. If you save Automix 7 and later read it back in, it will overwrite the data in Automix 7. You cannot re-route this information to another Automix location. If you dump the entire contents of the Automix memory you cannot just read back in one memory location, it overwrites the entire Automix memory. So, be careful.

In the SETUP page, you can enable MIDI dump data compression. This will save storage space on the destination device, but should not be selected when the data is intended for an 02R that does not have V2 software. The data is automatically expanded when read back into a V2 02R.

Remote Control

V2 offers remote control of external devices from the 02R. If you hold down the FLIP button, you enter a new REMOTE CONTROL area. From here you have four different external devices that you can control at the same time from each Scene Memory location. The controllable devices available are 02R, 03D, ProMix 01, General MIDI, MMC (MIDI Machine Control for tape machines), 16 tracks of Pro Tools, and some of the more recent Yamaha reverb devices. I have been using a ProMix 01 for extra effects returns. Any level, pan and memory recall data for the ProMix 01 is stored with the 02R scene and completely reset whenever I recall an 02R scene.

There is also a Remote Page for BUS/AUX MASTERS. This is not really a remote device, but it lets you control the BUSS and AUX master levels with the 02R faders instead of the encoding wheel, which was the only way in previous software versions.

Digital I/O

V2 has added a 24 bit recording mode for those who do not have 24 bit recorders yet. It works by splitting the 24 bit signal into two 16 bit signals. One channel carries bits 1-16 and the other channel carries bits 17-24. When played back they are put back together to form the 24 bit signal. This will turn any 16 bit eight track recorder into a four track 24 bit recorder. Of course, you need 24 bit data from somewhere to make it work out, but more on this some other time.

Conclusion

That about does it. There may be something I forgot, and if there is, you probably won’t need it. There is an extensive list of new features in V2 for the 02R, and I am sure they will quickly find their way into your 02R.