With any new product for the live sound industry, extensive testing must be done before the product can be released to market, and there is no more challenging a landscape than the UK festival circuit.
The 2011 summer festival circuit, which includes the likes of Reading and Leeds, Download, V Festival, and many more, provided Lake Processing with the perfect opportunity to get the LM 44 into the hands of end users, and the outstanding feedback the company received meant the product was able to launch in September 2011.
The LM 44 is a powerful, full-featured Digital Audio System Processor based on the highly acclaimed Lake Processing technology, which builds on the run-away success of the LM 26, and marking another major step for the Lake brand under the stewardship of Sweden’s Lab.gruppen.
Identical in many respects to the LM 26 Digital Audio Loudspeaker Processor, the LM 44 is distinguished primarily by a different input/output configuration. The LM 44 provides four analog input and four analog outputs, in contrast to the LM 26’s 2-in/6-out. In addition, the LM 44 accommodates 8-in/8-out AES3 and 4-in/8-out Dante digital audio transport. The LM 44 benefits from the latest implementation of Lake’s iconic ‘Mesa EQ’ configuration, utilising 4 Mesa modules, each with an independent input mixer and output signal processing chain.
One user who had extensive first hand experience of what the unit can do is, George Puttock, System Tech with leading UK company Adlib Audio. “I’ve been using the LM 44 on a few shows this summer on beta testing,” Puttock said. “It has been absolutely brilliant, it hasn’t had a single glitch, even when it has been running continuously for four days. As good as, if not better than, the LM 26. I’ve been running redundant Dante on it, with absolutely minimal latency, no artefacts running at 96khz resolution, it’s been brilliant.”
The LM 44 is ideally suited for a wide number of different applications, including as a mix-matrix and full system EQ – sitting between a mixer and virtually any high-end performance loudspeaker system – switching between consoles on large events, inserted EQ for monitor systems, FOH to stage digital transmission, line driver for self-powered systems, and as a Dante break-in/break-out box.
Puttock continued: “I love it for the resolution of everything. The resolution of the gain, the delay, the EQ, the incredibly low noise floor, it’s virtually inaudible when you’ve got it inserted into the system. It’s also very good for being able to build a system offline. I’ve done a few festivals with it over the summer, using the LM 44 as a matrix mixer. So taking AES and analogue from more than one source and mixing it all together, being able to mute on different desks when they are recalling all the show files so that the show goes on, with analogue fall back to the AES and then sending that with Dante, very low latency, down to the stage end where it is processed with the LM 26s.”
Of course, The LM 44 integrates fully into all existing Lake system inventories, including PLM Series and LM 26, as well as with Dolby Lake Processors and all other legacy Lake devices – all controlled together via Lake Controller software, providing unrivalled flexibility and ease of use for existing Lake users, a fact welcomed by end user such as Puttock. “I’d say that Lake Processing was an extremely innovative and very reliable system for being able to have multiple zones of processing, with very high resolution, total recall, and total recall. We love it.”
This article first appeared in the October 2011 edition of Total Production International. You can view the full publication online by clicking HERE