Midas mixing consoles have been at the top of the heap as far as live concert sound is concerned since they were first introduced, way back in 1969. Back then, when live sound could at best be described as ‘primitive’, a good-sounding live mixer just was not readily available off the shelf. In the studio domain things were different with plenty of top-notch gear available. So, seeing a ready niche in the market, a bunch of the UK’s top young electronics techies were assembled. The brief was: it’s got to sound good, have the features required for the job at hand, and it must be ultra reliable on the road.
Fast forward some 35 years later and we still see Midas consoles used by most of the world’s top engineers. It seems that Midas’ original vision was spot on: quality always need to top the list of priorities in the long haul. Until the release of the Midas Venice in 2001, the high price of the Midas sound meant it was out of reach for many operators. The compact Venice quickly became the company’s biggest seller. Unfortunately, for some applications, the Venice was a little lacking on features, although it sounds superb. Sales to the company were lost as there was just too much of a gap between the Venice and the next model up (the Legend) in both the features set and price. Enter the Midas Verona.
John Oakley the company’s MD and David Wiggins, international sales manager, introduced the Verona to the Australian audio industry at the recent Entech trade show in Sydney. The first thing they talked about was the sound quality (yep, that’s pretty important for a sound engineer to hear). They discussed at length the lengths their chief designer Alex Cooper had gone to in creating this new product, and answered the many questions asked by the industry’s operators. This was a very informative session to attend prior to a product review.
The Verona arrived from the production plant in Scotland in its factory-commissioned purple flightcase – quite a striking-looking item. The review console is the 48-channel version and two of us managed without too much difficulty to lay the case flat, remove the lid and lift it onto a platform. Midas can supply a clever tilt stand, the ‘Easy Tilt’, which would no doubt come highly recommended by your chiropractor.
Upon unpacking the Verona, it became immediately obvious that it is not just an upgraded Venice, but an all-new design from top to bottom. It’s much larger than the Venice and has a load more features. It has the same subtly striking look of all current Midas mixes – purple and other pastel colours abound – while the colour-coding of the controls is an aspect the designers have paid quite a bit of attention to.
The console’s foundation is a very strong steel chassis to which the various modular input and output sections are bolted to. In an effort to save weight, end and rear parts are made of high impact injection moulded plastic.
Module blocks feature a structural sub chassis, housing two PCBs (printed circuit boards) and are covered by a faceplate with all the channel markings. The front panel can be easily removed with a special headed screwdriver, allowing for easy cleaning. The same fastener is used to bolt the PCBs to the chassis, so you could totally disassemble the whole unit with just the one tool.
The construction’s design has eliminated the need for long ribbon cables. The aim here is to improve both reliability and crosstalk rejection and allows for very easy serviceability. Meanwhile, a new design of edge connector, a ‘Lumberg’, with very low electrical resistance, is used throughout the console to patch all the sections together.
The metal sub chassis provides substantial electrical screening under the PCBs, protecting buses from noise pickup. This also allows for the use of internal power supplies without interference. The PCBs are made with most of the surface mount components on the underside so that they’re not as affected by dust and liquid spills. All the pots and electrolytic capacitors are mounted conventionally on the top of the board. Major circuit test points are positioned on the top of the board to simplify fault diagnosis at system level (or down to component level) while in situ – no test jig is required for fault finding. Air-cooling of the console’s internals is carefully controlled using vents on the top and sides of the unit. Air that cools the internal PSU is isolated from entering the rest of the console.
Analogue mixing console construction sure has come a long way in the past 35 years.
A brand new high performance mic preamp design is the foundation of the input module. It can handle a massive +18dB input level without distortion. According to the company’s MD this is an improved version of the classic Midas XL4 design.
The EQ section comprises a frequency-swept four-band (fixed Q) on the two mid bands, with shelving high and low frequency controls (±15dB). There is a switched high-pass filter with sweepable frequency (20Hz to 200Hz) and an EQ Defeat button. Individual channel control features available are: phantom power button with associated red LED, mic input 15dB pad, mic phase change button and switched external insert point.
The Input level metering is looked after by a four-segment LED meter, positioned adjacent to the nicely-weighted Panasonic 100mm self-cleaning fader. These are designed to be quite resilient to liquid and dust exposure. Above the fader is the large red mute button with associated red LED. It operates a soft mute circuit with totally silent operation. This is placed above the solo button (also with a indicator LED) which helps to avoid accidental operation. Four mute groups are available with simple push-button activation. There is no computer chip logic control on this mixer.
The console has eight subgroups. In addition there are three main output buses left/right and mono – you can find the relevant routing buttons above the large pan pot. Below the pan controls are a couple of buttons to engage a few neat features. First up, there is ‘Groups Pan’, which routes the channel signal either pre or post pan into the subgroups. This is handy for sending the signal to a multi-track recorder via the group while still having the ability to do some fancy panning work on that guitar solo! Secondly, the Master/SIS (Spatial Imaging System) button configures the pan pot to allow you to easily mix in LCR (left/centre/right) when using centre cluster speakers. With SIS engaged, pan left and signal comes out of the left master bus; pan centre and the signal comes out of only the mono bus; pan right and the signal comes out the right bus. Pan between these settings and the signal comes out of left (or right) and centre in varying degrees. To get a signal into L/R & C, disengage SIS and route into all three via the group selection buttons.
Eight aux sends are provided. Six of the eight aux sends are globally switchable pre/post fade on an individual send basis on the output section. Aux 7&8 are individually switchable pre/post fade and, peculiarly, these pots have a lighter feel than the other aux pots (maybe handy for low-light ‘no-look’ mixing?). An ‘Aux EQ’ defeat switch is provided, which is great when the board is being used to mix front of house as well as monitors – it allows the operator to EQ the FOH sound as much as they like without affecting the sound on stage. Next up, a bit of Midas quirkiness creeps in: positioned next to the channel EQ defeat (marked EQ On) is a button marked in big letters as EQ Off! And in small letters the legending reads ‘aux pre’…
Round the back, the main XLR inputs use gold-plated Neutrik components and can be used with balanced mic or line level signals. The line jack is for use with balanced or unbalanced line level signals and is, of course, isolated from the 48V phantom power. The insert jack is unbalanced, wired with tip send/ring return and positioned pre EQ. The direct output jack is impedance balanced with hot on the tip and cold on the ring. The signal is post EQ but pre mute and fader (jumpers on the PCB can be used to alter this). A little point of possible confusion can be seen at the rear of the console: every input channel is marked with (positioned between the direct out and line in connectors) ‘line in left (stereo only) line in right’. All good, except for the fact that the stereo channels don’t have a line out. And it is totally irrelevant to mono channels, which make up the majority of the inputs. Hey chaps, why don’t you just put a correctly marked sticker on the rear of the stereo channels?
