Yamaha Music Gulf FZE (YMGF) recently held its first regional event in the UAE in partnership with sister brand Nexo. Taking place at the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Stadium, the event attracted approximately 120 guests from across the Middle East and Africa – a large amount from Nigeria, Egypt and Lebanon – and backgrounds including event companies, distributors and integrators. In addition to being the first event held with Nexo, it was also the first time that guests had the opportunity to get up close with the new Yamaha PM7.
The evening kicked off with presentations and demos on the PM7 by Yamaha’s manager of application engineering, Andy Cooper. This was followed by a similar presentation from Nexo’s Val Gilbert on the French manufacturer’s latest solutions. ‘We’ve basically put on a gig with a live band and a large PA system at a corporate event,’ said Mr Cooper. ‘Of course, we’ve got the various Nexo stacks and racks, but from the Yamaha side we’ve got the PM7 mixer at FOH and a Rivage PM10 at monitors. They’ve been linked with a TWINLANe fibre optic ring and we’ve also got a little Dante card in there for live recording as well. This is the first time that most people have been able to get hands-on with the PM7. But even beyond that, they’ve been most excited to get to hear it and simply amazed by the sound quality. People were blown away by how few plug-ins I was using to create the sound.’
Attendees were split into small groups for dedicated hands-on sessions before being treated to live band demos and a buffet dinner. ‘It’s nice to feel and touch the console,’ explained Sound On Stage Events’ general manager, Rawad Saad. ‘It’s one of those consoles where you can see everything and what all of the new options available are.’
Having also attended Dante training sessions earlier in the day, Nader Fathy Sadek Boulosh from Egyptian distributor, UTI, felt the event was perfectly organised: ‘All of our suppliers and guests that we invited from Egypt have been very happy and we feel we achieved our goal. I think the compact size of the PM7 will probably make it a better seller in this region. The advanced and beginners Dante training we participated in earlier was also very helpful for our suppliers.’
‘I came in 2017 for the launch of the PM10 and was already very familiar with Yamaha – I have all of the series, the whole family,’ enthused Assem El Sayed, from Egyptian company, Midnight. ‘What I really liked about this event was the welcoming feel; Yamaha made us feel very at home and a part of the family. While the PM10 is a very sophisticated console, the smaller PM7 console is more appealing for me.’