Dugan-MY16 Goes Mobile With Heinen Studios

Distributed by Yamaha Commercial Audio, the Dugan-MY16 is an automatic mixing card for Yamaha digital mixers that employs advanced technology from Dan Dugan Sound Design. Heinen Studios is a long-term user of Yamaha digital mixers, with DM2000 and 01V96i digital mixing consoles being used in its OB trucks, Ü1, Ü2 and Ü4.

With a DM2000 and a brand new Dugan-MY16 card on board, Ü2 was recently used to record the programme Talking of Tomorrow for national radio station Deutschlandradio Kultur. The recording was attended by Heinen Studios engineers Sebastian Wittenberg and Jens Hunecke, owner Stefan Heinen and Arthur Koll, Sales Engineer Broadcast at Yamaha Music Europe GmbH.

“Discussion programmes with multiple participants are always a challenge to record,” says Stefan. “Room acoustics and crosstalk mean that the microphone channels should ideally be muted until needed, as keeping them open can cause unwanted sound and feedback. But, at the same time, the debate always reaches a level of momentum where people are speaking spontaneously and it is very difficult for the engineer to rapidly open and close the individual mic channels as required.”

“Discussion programmes with multiple participants are always a challenge to record,” says Stefan. “Room acoustics and crosstalk mean that the microphone channels should ideally be muted until needed, as keeping them open can cause unwanted sound and feedback. But, at the same time, the debate always reaches a level of momentum where people are speaking spontaneously and it is very difficult for the engineer to rapidly open and close the individual mic channels as required.”

“Patching it into the console’s input channels and setting up the virtual remote control panel over the OB van’s local network was very intuitive and straightforward,” says Stefan. “Overall it was very convincing demonstration of the card. If little or no signal is present the channel is inaudible, but as soon as one of the participants speaks you get a very clear, dry and direct sound, the levels remain constant and the engineer only has to maintain the balanced, overall gain.”

As the Dugan-MY16 is inserted post-fader, the engineer can still alter the individual levels if required. But the card is so efficient that it is very rarely needed, if ever.

“Using it on Talking of Tomorrow was a very convincing demonstration. The card produces excellent quality sound and the fact that it works automatically makes a tremendous difference to mixing such shows,” says Stefan. “We have already used it on several other productions and have found it ideal for both recordings and live broadcasts.”