YAMAHA LS9

In the course of my career, I have reviewed a couple of Yamaha Commercial Audio mixers PM series analog consoles, as well. They all feel like a Yamaha with an incredible array of powerful features, and the number of features obviously relates to price and level of sophistication

My LS9-32 arrived literally hours before a series of local gigs with Wreckords Records artist Closenuf — just enough time to unpack it and give it a spin. Out of the box, the LS9 has I/O only on balanced XLRs: 32 inputs and 16 omni outputs. The input XLRs are self-explanatory. The output XLRs can be configured to serve as aux, group, matrix outs and main outs. At first sight, this was intimidating — I had visions of digging through menus just to learn how to assign the L/R master bus to two of these outs — but when I noticed that outs 15 and 16 were also labeled “L” and “R,” I opted to leave the manual in the box and go for the snoop approach: Turn it on and see what happens.