QOLLE IZM 125

Izm 125  Mixer perfect match for the WaveB’x. Besides being among the nicest sounding location board on the market. Its features are unique and cannot be found on any other location board.

The izm125 Digital Portable Mixer is a new battery powered 8 Channels Audio Mixer combining high quality Microphone HAwith Analog processing to give a sharp focus in Field Surround Recording!

Tamura's analog consoles have been mainstays with Japanese broadcasting companies over the last 30 years. The Qolle Izm 125 is their feature-packed but diminutive 5.1 surround mixer for field recording on Film/TV shoots. On the analog side, this completely portable, battery-operated eight-channel mixer has: eight output busses; +4dBm Master and Monitor stereo and mono outs; a headphone jack and phantom powering. The equalizer and compressor on each of the eight mic inputs make life for production sound recordists much saner. The internal timecode generator comes in handy when extreme accuracy is needed but what separates this unit from the rest are the extensive digital and interfacing options. There are AES/EBU and TDIF I/O jacks and two IEEE 1394 Firewire/mLan jacks for connecting to the WaveB’x, the Wavet’Tp or any other high end audio workstation.

Super High Quality Channel 8 Analog Input Processing

Communications for Controlling Recorders
 

The Makers of  the Izm 125

Tamura is a highly-respected company within the Japanese professional audio industry, with an established tradition spanning over 70 years. Until now very few outside of Japan have ever heard of the company, however, but this is set to change as Tamura is setting its sights on the international market.

Founder Tokumatsu Tamura was born in 1886. He founded Tamura in 1924 having worked in the US and undergone training as an engineer with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, where he learnt about Western manufacturing practices well in advance of many others back in Japan. After returning to his homeland at the age of 35 he became interested in radio, which was just entering the test broadcasting stage, and by 1924 (one year before the start of NHK broadcasts) Tokumatsu Tamura had established the Tamura Radio Store in Shinjuku, Tokyo.

This was the beginning of the Tamura Corporation, which is now active in a number of different product sectors, with manufacturing and sales offices, for non-audio related products, located throughout the world. Tamura’s other interests include manufacturing a range of high-quality electrical components including transformers for many of the mobile phones that we use today, as well industrial soldering systems, electro-chemical products and power supplies.

To this day, the Tamura Corporation is a family run concern with chairman, Itsuya Tamura (son of Tokumatsu Tamura) and his son Naoki Tamura, as president, overseeing global operations.

Tamura started producing products for the Japanese professional audio industry 35 years ago and now, according to Tamura, sales account for at least 60 per cent of the domestic digital audio console market within Japanese TV broadcast facilities. As a direct result of this Tamura has developed strong relationships with long-established broadcasters such as NHK, Fuji TV, TBS, Nippon TV and Asahi TV. To help maintain these relationships Tamura also provides comprehensive technical support to its clients, keeping a team of engineers on call 24 hours a day in order to support the products and keep the broadcasters’ productions rolling. In fact, it is important to note that Tamura does not only produce consoles, it also provides turnkey broadcast solutions including full studio design services, wiring, installation and commissioning services. As a result, the maintenance and support given by Tamura is for a complete installation and not only for its consoles.

In order to put Tamura’s domestic success in perspective, it has recently been involved in two very large projects in Tokyo. One is to provide Nippon TV with complete audio and communications systems for 20 studios at NTV’s new Shiodome head office in the Bayside area of Tokyo, and the second is to install audio and communications equipment in six major studios at TV Asahi’s new head office in Roppongi, Tokyo. The total value of these projects is approximately US$35m-50.

Nineteen-ninety-nine saw major structural changes take place within Tamura, with the aim of making the corporation more efficient and aggressive - not only within the domestic Japanese market but also overseas. Since that period of restructuring Tamura has a new, modern corporate logo, and the brand name Qolle - which is Persian for summit or zenith – is beginning to be seen on many of its professional audio products. The Qolle brand includes products such as digital audio consoles, machine controllers and studio system controllers. Although all these products were designed with the domestic market in mind, Tamura knew that if was to expand its professional audio sales it had to address the international market. The task of establishing an international presence fell to Tamura’s Broadcom division, and notably to Jun Yamazaki and Ian Robertson who are both based at the Tamura head office in Oizumi Gakuen, Tokyo. Yamazaki and Robertson began visiting international tradeshows in 2000 in order to carry out product research, and from 2001 they were also promoting their then current range of Qolle products. It didn’t take long for them to realize that the products designed specifically for Japan were not exactly what the western market was looking for, particularly with regard to external styling, user interface and overall ‘feel’.

Tamura initiated a development strategy to produce a range of Qolle products under the ‘izm’ equipment series name that specifically addressed the export market, while also expanding its target markets from broadcast, as in Japan, to include film, postproduction and other sectors of the professional audio industry. Jun Yamazaki was instrumental in mapping out a development strategy and devised an overall plan for the izm range consisting of four stages. First the field recording stage, which can now be seen in the new izm125 mixer, recording products for Foley and ADR, consoles necessary within premix facilities and finally a spread of products that would be utilized at the final mix stage. Interlaced with this strategy would be the release of ancillary devices designed to complement these products.

The start of 2002 saw the initial debut of two izm products. The izm125 Digital Portable Mixer, an eight-channel battery-powered digital mixer designed for 5.1 surround location recording especially for film, and the izm806 System Controller (developed from the very successful SRX series of system controllers used in Japan) providing video and audio synchronization for the audio post production industry. It is worth to noting that cosmetic design of all these products was out-sourced for the first time, in order to give the new products the Western feel necessary to make them appealing in Europe and the US. Feedback received during the recent IBC and AES trade shows has confirmed to Tamura that this was an effort that was well worth making.

Tamura has been working closely with US sound designer Frank Serafine in the development of the izm125 location mixer, especially in relation to functionality, software control and operation. While internationally respected surround sound expert Mick Sawaguchi also provided Tamura with initial ideas. Serafine is well known for his work on Hollywood feature films - including Field Of Dreams and The Hunt For Red October. He has also worked with recording artists such as Peter Gabriel, has released a number of SFX libraries including many award-winning sounds from a variety of Hollywood blockbusters and also worked with a number of other Japanese companies in the past. The collaboration with Serafine has, according to Tamura, worked very well, not just at the development stage but also with promotion to the media and potential users throughout the US market. Actual product release of the izm125 is slated for April this year and Frank Serafine will be working closely with Tamura in placing this product into some of the major film studios in the US.