New Processors for Y56K/Y96K cards

Available from your Yamaha dealer

The Y56K takes the AW4416 where no Professional Audio Workstation has gone before. With the Y56K, there is no longer any reason for DAW users to be envious of rackmount and computer based processing. The Y56K is a high performance DSP add-in card running Waves' world-renowned signal processors - the quality standard for thousands of top industry professionals.
Slide the Y56K card into either of the Mini-YGDAI slots on the back of the AW4416, and a whole new world of signal processing becomes available for tracking, mixing, and mastering. The Y56K includes an outstanding processor package, including Waves' famous Renaissance Compressor and EQ, TrueVerb reverb, L1 Ultramaximizer, SuperTap delay, and DeEsser. These processors are all available in addition to the standard AW4416 effects.

For Y56k User Manual click here (pdf 409kb).

Press Releases

(All of the comments below were freely sent to Waves or were posted on the AW4416 usenet)

The "Light of Day" Story

My background is NOT recording... I'm a guitar player who has worked with several programmable effects units, guitar synths, drum machines, etc over the years. The thing that floored me about the Y56K was how fast I was able to tweak up an existing work in progress and give it a professional "finished" sound. I used the L1+… the keyboard part on the song intro suddenly came out of the mud and had a little sparkle or life that wasn't there before.My initial run with the card was to add EQ, De-Esser, and L1+ to the stereo mix. I was very impressed with how, after a brief peek at the manual on the L1+, everything had such a nice intuitive feel. The Y56K does a great job of linking your eyes and ears and hands. What does that mean? (Heck, I dunno...)...Seriously, there's just a great interface between what you hear, what you adjust, and what you see on the screen when you adjust.Are you sunk if you can't buy a Waves card? I don't think so. Can you have mine? I don't think so. My personality is not one that's going to leave me working for hours trying to squeeze the last .1% out of a mix...if it's gonna take that I'll take it to someone who can do it faster. The y56k looks like the perfect bridge to take me from where I was to where I want to be.As far as existing effects/eqs/compressors, etc., I think I'll wind up learning how to better adjust my AW effects by observing what the Waves software does to my signal. If we know anything from the history of recorded music, there are LOTS of ways to skin a cat...some tools just make the job easier than others. Here were some of my decision making points before purchase, setting software features aside: 1. I was either going to buy this card, or a ADAT I/O...I was able to mentally subtract the cost of the standalone card from the total purchase price. 2. With most musical gear, lots of folks buy something, try it, then sell it. The ratio of AW users who've posted "I love the card" vs. the number who say "I tried it, but it's not my thing" is overwhelming. The score is probably 20 to 0. You never see that with other musical gear. 3. Confirming #2 above is the rarity of used y56k cards for sale. The only used ones I've seen lately are being sold with the workstation or mixer. And hey, I'll confess... when the sealed box arrived I looked at it before opening it and said "Is this really gonna be worth it?" 30 minutes later the answer was "Yes."

Dave Smith (Smitty)

"it's a great card! It addresses limitations of the AW4416 and AW4428, like their lack of real mastering tools and only two onboard processors.
The Y56K is very flexible as it has an ADAT I/O, allows you to use effects as inserts or aux sends, use many effects available simultaneously, and much more, and most important of all sounds great! I've tried a lot of different DSP/Plugin systems, and Waves is one of the few that IMHO sounds closest to outboard hardware. In some cases the effects go beyond what outboard hardware is capable of! The Y56K presets are very useful starting points, all effects allow extensive tweaking of all parameters and it's hard to make them sound bad. There's also the option of adding additional effects later via the Y56K's serial port, so that we can download and install the effects needed for a particular session. Very nice indeed. If you have an AW, you should seriously consider a Y56K card before getting outboard processors."

Thor Legvold

Thor Legvold, of SMSD studios, Norway, provides sound restoration and mastering services. SMSD also offers quality "live on-location" recording, mainly of acoustic ensembles (choirs, brass/mixed bands, acoustic groups and orchestras) as well as overdubbing, mixing and post-production tasks.

"The RenEQ, RenComp, and L1+ have no peer in the AW library. These tools are especially useful in mixdown and mastering. If you're intending to master internally on the AW, the Waves Card is a powerful ally. I think practically anything that can be recorded would benefit - how much benefit is subjective and dependant upon the engineer's experience and willingness to dive in and really discover what the plug-ins can do. When you consider the processing power and audio enhancement you're getting for the money, the value is a given IMO."

Dan Goodman

"Last week I went over to a friend's house to track some vocals. He has a couple of U87's and a Focusrite pre. We bypassed the AW pres and with in digital.

I was expecting a huge improvement over my setup (AKG C3000 and DBX 386 pre) but when I got my AW back home, I was having a lot of trouble getting the vocs to sound even as good as what I had done in my studio. In one song in particular, there were some resonate freqs coming through at 1k and 350. I could not get them out with the AW eq's without pulling all the guts out of it.

Anyway, I was all set to trash the whole thing and start over. After plugging in the Waves card and learning how to insert the eq, I pulled up the worse offending song and put the Waves EQ to work. WOW, I was amazed to find that I could fix the track almost immediately by setting the Q to narrow, boosting vol and sweeping freqs. I found the offenders, pulled them down and slightly widened the Q. Viola..... they sound perfect.

There has been some discussion about price. The EQ alone makes it a must have!"

Steve Tichenor

"When I got my first AW, I was surprised a bit by how much EQ I had to use to get the same audible "effect" compared to the analog boards I was used to using most of the time. Then I remembered having the same experience when I had used 02R's in the past. But the Ren EQ is definitely more "analog sounding" in character, and more "analog" in the response. I still love and use the AW's built in EQ, but for some things, the Waves EQ is really hard to beat. Both are valuable tools to have available... depends on what you want to do as to which will be the more appropriate tool at any given moment.

IMO, there's no comparison between the AW and Waves Trueverb reverbs. Even though the AW reverbs are useful and can be made to sound quite nice, the Waves reverbs are capable of sounding light years ahead of just about anything you'll find out there for under $2 K."

Phil Okeefe

"I was shocked at how easy it was to eq my mix with the RenEQ. In 3 minutes I had a better sound than I ever got (on this particular effort) after tons of tweaking with the Yamaha eq. I had almost given up. I only had a couple minutes to try the card last night, and I must say that I am very impressed."

Alan McAdams

"I have been working with the Y56K effects card for the AW4416 on a number of my recent album projects and have been amazed by its usefulness. The Renaissance Compressor and Equalizer are very impressive. Until the introduction of the Y56K effects card I had been using equalizers and compressors made by Avalon, Summit, Amek, Tubetech, Focusrite, and Manley. All of which are world renowned for their excellent sound qualities. After working with the Y56K I must add Waves Y56K effects card to my list of excellent processors. The Renaissance Compressor is extremely smooth even when set to extreme settings. The equalizer has a very musical tone and is equally useful when you need to bring the sizzle out of the high end, or take the sharpness out of the mid's, all the way to when you need to add some punch to your low end. The Trueverb reverb is also a very versatile effect. The different possibilities available are endless, from simple Hall, Room and Plate effects to more complex Early Reflection and Ambience type effects. I have been using Trueverb in conjunction with Lexicon PCM 91's and a T.C. Electronics M5000, and Trueverb has truly held it's own. In a number of applications I could not hear a difference between Trueverb and the PCM 91's. Finally, the L1 Ultramaximizer is just simply incredible. The L1 can take your project from an adequate demo, and turn it into a polished and powerful sounding record. I have not spent very much time with the Supertap Delay or the Desser, but based upon the quality of the other programs I am sure that these effects are nothing less than impressive. The Y56K is quite an exciting and impressive effects card. The sonic quality and the extreme versatility make the Y56K a must have for every AW4416. Good luck and congratulations Waves on a great new product."

Keith Alexander
Groove Team Productions, Inc.

The AW4416 (or even AW2816) is a completely different machine without it. I loaded some old mixes in and added Waves effects in it and it took it to another level. The thing that really impressed me is how accurate the metering is...very comprehensive. Within a day I burned a mastered CD of a couple of my demos and had a few people listen to it. They were so impressed with the sound quality that now they are asking me to master their stuff. Now it seems I might be able to pay for the card by mastering other people's stuff. It is also nice to know that I have access to so much effects...Think about, I can use Yamaha's amp simulator (which is derived from their DG stomp boxes, which I like the tone), plus a Yami reverb, eq, and compression, along with super high quality waves reverb, compression, eq, and their super L1+ plug-in. SAWEEEEEET!!! I have not read the tutorial on the card but downloaded the manual day before I received the card. That was all I needed (one day) and I fully understand and am able to route audio signals to and from the Y56k (If you are an AW poweruser, you should have no trouble getting around the card).

P.S. AGAIN THIS IS A MUST HAVE CARD!!!! GET THE CARD. SELL A GALLON OF BLOOD...SELL A KIDNEY, BUT GET THE CARD!!! :-)

Val Aubourg

How to Buy:

Q:  Can I use the Y56K's ADAT inputs to bring digital audio into my AW and at the same time use the Y56K to process AW tracks? 

A:  The Y56K has a total of eight (8) channels for input and outputs. Each channel-pair (1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8) can be switched to receive audio coming from the AW OR from ADAT by selecting so in the Y56K's SRC (for Source) column. Switching channel pair means that when you switch channel 1 to ADAT source, channel 2 also gets switched.

When a channel-pair, 1 and 2 for example, is switched to receive audio from the AW, channels 1/2 cannot be used to bring audio into the AW via the ADAT lightpipe. Respectively, when a channel-pair is switched to receive audio from ADAT lightpipe, it cannot be used to process audio coming from the AW (AW tracks for example).

Each channel-pair selection is independent of the other. For example, channels 1/2 and 5/6 can be set to receive audio from ADAT inputs while channels 3/4 and 7/8 are set to receive audio from the AW. Any other combination is possible (with the limitations of selecting channel pairs and the total of 8 channels).

Now, regarding outputs - The Y56K always sends its 8 outputs both to the AW over the mini-YGDAI bus AND through its lightpipe outputs at the same time. Whether there's any channel set to receive any of these outputs on the AW side depends on how you set the input routing patch in the AW itself. The same goes for the lightpipe channels.

About the effects, DSP, and their relation to the input-output scheme described above. Well, there's no relation. The DSPs don't care how you set the inputs in the SRC column. You can select to use (or not use) any effects on any chain regardless if it receives input from ADAT or AW. Last - the input setting (the SRC column) is saved with the Main preset (when you select Save from the upper bar). That means, you can use one preset to receive inputs from ADAT and another to receive inputs from AW and pull each one up by selecting Load when you need it.