Yamaha M7CL
A digital console that arrived as a working tool and stayed one - 32 or 48 channels, and a stagebox rebate that put it in a lot of vans.
Overview
The M7CL is a digital mixing console from Yamaha Commercial Audio. In the wild it shows up on a house-of-worship desk, at a small festival FOH position, or in a club booth, usually with a CAT5 cable running to a stage box instead of a copper snake. The console was offered in two channel counts - 32 and 48. By the end of the 2000s Yamaha was advertising a rebate program that paired either model with a Digital Stagebox Kit. It offered up to $1,500 cash back on a console-plus-stagebox purchase and up to $400 for existing M7CL owners who added a stagebox alone. This was a console meant to be bought and put to work.
The stagebox in that pairing is the SB168-ES. It uses EtherSound technology to carry mic/line inputs and line outputs at 24-bit, 48 kHz over a single cable, according to Yamaha's own advertising of the period. The pitch was simple - move the mic preamps closer to the stage, cut the cabling, and let the engineer switch inputs without repatching. Mix (March 2010, p.51) described the later M7CL-48ES variant as connecting to as many as three SB168-ES stage boxes over one CAT5 run for plug-and-play operation, with 48 remote-control inputs and 24 outputs on the stage side. Add the console's own 8 omni inputs and outputs and the total comes to 56 in and 32 out, with 3 MY-card slots for personal monitoring, recording, or plug-ins.
Yamaha kept the platform alive with software rather than new hardware. The M7CLv2 update added Global Paste for simultaneous editing across multiple scenes, Matrix Sends on Fader giving access to 24 mix busses, Post-Fader Inserts on all inputs and outputs, Post-Fader Direct Outs, Monitor/Cue Level on the stereo/mono faders, an improved Recall Safe mode, and Relative Level Channel Link plus User Defined Key Setup in the offline editor. It was a free download for existing M7CL users, and new consoles shipped with it pre-installed. For anyone buying used today, the software revision is a firmware question, not a hardware variant, so a clean early console can be brought up to v2 spec without a trip to a service center.
By 2010 the control surface had moved off the desk entirely. Yamaha released StageMix, an iPad application that let an engineer set monitor mixes from the performer's position on stage, adjusting mix parameters over a wireless link. The requirements were modest - a WiFi access point, an Ethernet connection from that access point to an M7CL running v3 software, and the iPad itself. StageMix was a free download from the iTunes Store, as was the companion AuviTran Network ASIO Streamer, a low-latency ASIO driver that let a computer access the console's multichannel capabilities. To push adoption, Yamaha ran a promotion offering a no-charge iPad with the purchase of a 32- or 48-channel M7CL.
On the evidence available, the M7CL is not a collector's object the way a CS-80 or an NS-1000M is. The documentation here is period advertising, software announcements, and trade-press coverage. There is no service literature, no failure patterns, and no current market data. Anyone considering one today should check the software version, the presence of the matching stagebox and interface cards, and the condition of the touchscreen and faders, since those are the parts the documentation covers. What it's worth, what breaks, and what parts cost, the archive cannot yet answer.
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