Yamaha DMC1000 (1991)
A fully automated 22-input digital console that cost $32,000 in 1991 - and shipped with a free factory service upgrade shortly after launch.
Overview
Yamaha brought the DMC1000 to the 1991 trade shows already known for digital tape. The DMR8 and DRU8X eight-track recorders were the only digital recorders at the time putting 20 bits of audio data on tape. The DMC1000 was the other half of that plan: an all-digital 8:8:2 console meant to sit at the center of a facility working largely in the digital domain. Studio-Sound (July 1991, p.9) described it as a new all-digital 8:8:2 console built around 28-bit mixing, aimed at studios serving film, television, and record clients from the same room.
At launch Yamaha quoted a projected $32,000 for the board, with availability slated for April 1991. That bought a fully automated 22-input desk with ten output buses and four auxiliary buses, four-band parametric EQ on every channel, and a pair of SPX1000 effects processors built in. Digital I/O covered the major professional formats of the day: Sony SDIF-2, ProDigi, AES/EBU, and Yamaha's own proprietary serial format. That let the console talk to whatever converters and recorders a studio already owned.
Yamaha's advertising was pointed about the interface. A 1992 Mix-Magazine (May 1992, p.99) placement told readers to "forget it's digital," and pitched the DMC1000 as digital mixing technology advanced to a state of simplicity. A digital console lived or died on whether engineers could actually work on it, and Yamaha knew it. Channel inserts and direct outputs were provided, four aux sends fed external effects processors, and the two onboard digital multi-processors handled effects without outboard gear.
The trade press kept coming back to the console's flexibility. Mix-Magazine (October 1994, p.112) noted in a field test that the DMC1000 accommodates a wide variety of digital input and output formats, making it an extremely flexible console for mastering work. That same review pointed to the built-in ESAM (Edit Suite Audio Mixer) control, which let the board follow crossfade information from compatible video editors and switchers. That was useful in post-production rooms where the console had to track picture edits.
Yamaha kept the console current after launch. The company ran a free service upgrade on all DMC1000 consoles, with owners directed to technical support to arrange it, a detail preserved in the pages of EQ magazine. A 1993 Studio-Sound (December 1993, p.19) report described a software revision that restructured the console, offering individual channel configuration to either a stereo input pair or two mono channels, among other changes. By then the board had been on the market just over two years and had a reputation as a quality, high-end digital console.
The DMC1000 was not a project-studio mixer. At $32,000 it sat in professional post and recording facilities. Third-party format converters point the same way: boxes like the Spectral Translator were built to move eight channels of audio between the DMC1000 and Alesis ADAT, Tascam DA-88, and Spectral's own formats, all of them 16-bit at the time. Owners bought the DMC1000 to be the center of a digital plant.
Documentation on surviving units is thin. Because of the free factory upgrade and the later software revision, two DMC1000s sitting side by side may not be running the same firmware, so prospective owners should confirm which revision a given console carries before buying. The onboard SPX1000 effects and the automation are the features most likely to justify a purchase today, and also the ones most dependent on a healthy, correctly revised unit.
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