Yamaha 1202 Mixer Mic Preamps vs. Class A Chilton QM3 - Part 2 

To my ear the Yamaha sounds darker and punchier, while the Chilton has a tighter more focused sound (more glue/cohesion). Both are great!

I’ve mixed on he 1202 many times at festivals. They sound great.

MY REPORT Thanks for this vid. The Harmony sounds great (much to my surprise and I'll bet there are a few others that would not think a wall ornament would sound this nice). I took about ten runs through the piece then listened to several looped areas. Listening one Mackie HR842s from then switched to Sony MDR-7506 cans. - Listening the first few times I only heard minuscule differences the type that may be subject to imagination. (it was morning and I may have not quite being tuned in yet) - Then I thought I could hear a slight change as if changes were made to the lower mids. Sounded as if the Chilton had had a lower mid adjustment were as the Yamaha was left a little more flat in the same area. - Eyes open I could hear the differences which leads me to believe my interpretation could be subjective as I watched the screen to see which unit was being used. - Then I did an eyes closed test (because I was thinking "maybe this jerk just used one mixer to prove what a pretentious idiot I was") but I could hear the transition so I apologize for this paranoid assumption. - During the eyes closed test, there was a marked difference with again the Yamaha sounding slightly flatter (to me). The Chilton had what I would say was a better quality sound but not miles different and not something that couldn't be adjusted to get more air and less mud into the sound. Notes: listening on the Sonys was pointless. Someday I may have to do a product review on these Sonys. I bought two pair because I wanted a matched pair of industry standard phones to use while tracking clients. They are okay for a vocalist because they are bright and scooped and vocalists seem to like that and they are closed backed and isolated enough to keep most of the clicking and backing track bleed out but I found the scoop to be a terrible feature for things like drumming and loud electric guitar. The Sonys are also fine for tracking acoustic instruments. The other things I dislike about these Sonys is the way they fold up and the stupid curly cord. The curly cord grapples on to all sorts of shit and is not detachable so if you have someone who inadvertently walks away from their station the phones get yanked (oh it happens all the time with people you think would know better). One thing that is really great about modern phones is that a lot of them have a jack insert where a cable can be swapped and they simply become unplugged if the cord gets caught on something. The other thing I dislike about them is the way they fold up. They are fine if you stick them on a singers head and they stay there til the singer takes them off at the end of a tracking period but in my case, tracking my self playing instruments or singing, I may put phones on and off a hundred times in a day, the curly cable is always grabbing stuff and the way they fold up (I assume they fold up like that to save space when storing or traveling) I find them quite like picking up a sulking child who doesn't want to be picked up. My old phones can much more easily be put on and taken off with one hand and that is necessary when trying to wrangle a guitar or, god help you a fiddle or banjo where you've got a bow or fingerpicks on one hand and an instrument in the other. For drums they are just too hyped sounding. I have 3M safety phones for tracking drums. Very flat, no bottom but really good isolation. I can track drums with those and keep the phones quite quiet. At my age, keeping the volume at or reasonably low is important to minimize hearing damage and not spike my tinnitus. Further Notes: Listening is so subjective. I remember as a child going to sleep and listening to the tick tock of a clock. I could distinctly hear the difference of the two tones. But with practice I could change the way I heard "tick tock" to more of a "tock tic". On further experimenting and later opening the clock I came to realize that the two sounds I thought I was hearing were both the same sound. The mechanism was making just one tone with every tick. So now when doing listening tests I'm always aware of how fickle my perception can be. It can drive you nuts. But Jamie makes a beautiful presentation here. the Harmony guitar sounds so wonderful. It has an earthiness one might not be able to get from a Taylor or a Larivee. Same thing with this comparison. We all know the Chilton is a better board with old world engineering and better components. But ... is it better sounding or just different. Nice thing about that harmony is that it sounded like the intonation was good. But aside from intonation and playability I've found myself for years saying that there are now good or bad sounding guitars, just different. Around your campfire any guitar sounds better than no guitar.

They're both respectable. Yamaha sounds very nice and professional. Heard a bit of a warmer sound from the Chilton, perhaps.

I like the guitar on Chilton and a kit on Yamaha.

Not seeing any comments on the difference between the two in regards to depth and stereo field. The spread on the Yamaha is much wider.

came for the cool looking analog thing stayed for fancy accent

the old school yammie probably needs somTLC theyve been my secret weapon for years, well RM800 anyway

The Yamaha sounds a little brighter and punchier to my ears. The Chilton sounds fatter and warmer. Both sound good.

The Chilton sounds bigger and fuller, defenately prefer it on the guitar. On drums I think the Yamahas are very respectable, and perhaps could even be better than the Chiltons depending on the song/context.

The 1202 added a bit of hair to the sound. Less sparkle. The Chilton offered more to work with later.

Hi Jamie! Hi, I'm thinking of buying one to use in my home studio, does it have individual outputs on each channel? if so, pre eq or post? Thanks in advance!

Chilton for the win 100%, but in tests like these, I’d love to hear if you could make one sound like the other with some eq…

night and day the chilton is way better. lol what was your point again?

chilton sounds nice more open

chilton better.

Seems like the Yamaha is not passing through the snare sound cleanly ... it starts to fight with the guitar highs and the "opacity" of the guitar somehow changes. All the frequencies are there but the clarity is lost. And well, I am listening it on an old mid-level tablet. You have not amended a scheme how you splitted the mike signals ... I very much hope the experiment was set up correctly? Not taking the second signal from DO of the first console or smth?

hilarious. i've never heard anyone ('cept myself) praise this series of yamaha boards. but thanks for the comparison...even though i hear the difference a tiny bit(youtube sucks) and am sure the chilton is better...the yamaha is fair. I used this series back in the mid 80's...was my first 'big' board...before i knew what big was in reality. have owned 2 yamaha boards as a result over the years and finally gave up lugging the around. no more live/roadie type work for this old fart.

Dig it! Definitely prefer the Chilton, but the Yamaha isn't bad! (And looks pretty cool too)

I get to be the first 'dork' to say first in this channel????

I'm hearing a fairly significant difference, Jamie....the Chilton is much smoother in the top end.....and almost more 3d in its sound stage.

This sounds amazing man! Well done! What do you use as interface audio to record in your computer ? Thxxx

Would be really curious to compare the Chilton to Yamaha RM series (RM804/1608/2408) !

Chilton sounds way more Neve than yam the yam sounds cheap I think for thoses that think it’s like Neve that’s probably because it’s muffled and not as thin as sounding as something modern but gosh if compared to Neve’s I have it would be complete rubbish in comparison, the chilton would compare and it’s probably why the bbc used them back then, and the yam is most likely IC and not discreet Class AB either, so the yam would be more like vintage ssl at best which was built on NE5532 ics throughout But yeah really a huge difference there clearly the chilton is the type of vintage you would want to track through 💯

Chilton sounds phat and warm while the yamaha has more snap and openess. I'm curious to know how 90's drum n bass would sound on both consoles

And interestingly enough, my outboard mixer is a Yamie MC802. Can't say that I'm up to comparing mine to yours but perhaps you have an opinion on this mixer. I traded a PV 24 for it in the 90s when I went from a road musician to a stay at home studio guy. I've used it extensively in my home studio without complaint from me. When I bought it from another live sound engineer the guy told me it was broadcast quality, whatever that means. The MC802 came into play when I went to a Roland hard disk recorder in '97 (VS1680). My tests with the Roland led me to feel that the pre-amps in the unit did not cut it. So I fired up the MC and it was way better. Now days I'm running Clarett and Scarlet. I tested my MC against the Scarlett, it couldn't beat the Scarlett but it any wasn't less gooder. (the Yamie was noisier though) I'm interested to know (perhaps you said but I didn't get it) if you ran the Yamaha or the Chilton through the mains on each unit or did you just take a line from the channel strip. I'm assuming that you just took a line from the channel strip but the reason I mention it is that I used to run my MC802 signal through the channel and then to the mains and then to the VS. This gave a little bit more color and beef plus I could use the strip eqs.