Midas digital consoles were once again a highlight of the T in the Park festival as some 150 bands converged in Scotland for the annual three-day event, now in its 17th year. Scottish rental company EFX Audio supplied the Radio 1/NME stage with Midas Digital front and back with two XL8s at FOH and a PRO6 and PRO9 on monitors, while numerous bands, including Pulp and Foo Fighters on the main stage, arrived with their own Midas digital set-ups.
Steph Fleming of EFX, who also ran the Radio 1/NME stage last year, noted “One development from previous years was that I don’t think we met an engineer who had never seen Midas Digital before.”
As in previous years, EFX set up the two XL8s in tandem, so that guest engineers could listen in to the preceding band and get a feel for the EQ, as well as lining up gates, compressors, reverbs and overall functionality prior to line-checking their own band.
“We have a good degree of familiarity and experience with these systems,” says Fleming, “and this year we took it just a little further again.”
As well as the consoles, EFX deployed 192 channels of 431 mic splitters to ensure they were never short of inputs and outputs while a dozen 451 I/O boxes provided links to FOH, stage left, stage right and the drive for the monitor system. “It provides such great flexibility in the patching possibilities,” enthuses Fleming, “and means we are able to accommodate all of our guests’ signal requirements.”
Friendly Fires’ engineer Richard ‘Bars’ Barling was similarly impressed. “It was great,” he says. “It looked and sounded like an XL4, but I love the digital functionality, like how easy it is to have channels come to you rather than sloping through layers, as with some other consoles. I found the gates very accurate and the compressors very transparent, and the onboard reverbs and delay both sounded great. I also spoke to the outside broadcast guys and they commented on how good the Midas splits sounded.”
Indeed Bars was so struck with the XL8 he immediately requested a demo console to use at the iTunes festival the following week, with a view to taking a PRO6 on the road for the band’s first arena tour which kicks off in November.
Mat Acreman, a regular user of the Midas Heritage 3000 desk, mixed Welsh rock band Kids In Glass Houses on the Sunday night and was delighted with his first experience of a Midas XL8.
“I thought the POP(ulation) Groups were a great feature and really helped in getting mixes together in a short festival line-check,” says Acreman. “I loved the analogue feel and sound of the XL8. Everything was within arms’ reach and where I expected it to be, unlike some other digital consoles that keep you guessing forever.
“I knew the XL8 was going to be a great desk as soon as I turned up the first vocal fader. It had that great Midas sound from the off. It is definitely my favourite digital console both sound and functionality wise, and I can’t wait to use it again!”
While engineers sang the praises of Midas digital, Fleming paid tribute to Midas support. “The consoles were fantastic and the line system was without limitations,” he says. “However it wouldn’t be appropriate to talk of any of it without highlighting the fantastic support that we have always received from Midas. That level of support has been there from XL3 all the way through to XL8, and is as dependable as ‘that sound’ that comes from the boards. We’ve always had Midas consoles and it’d be no surprise for us to have more of them in the future.”
Midas digital consoles also made their mark at Knebworth’s Sonisphere festival the same weekend, where every headliner was mixed on a Midas console. Britannia Row Productions supplied two PRO6s, a PRO9 and an XL3 as well as an analogue Heritage 3000, while Metallica used their own XL8 at FOH.
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