MIDAS consoles resounding success at Echo Awards
A MIDAS PRO2 live audio system at FOH and PRO6 on monitors, provided by rental and production company SoundHead Company, commissioned by production companies EBS-Lights and Showplan and sourced from German MIDAS distributor Mega Audio, took centre stage at this year’s Echo Awards, Germany’s premier music awards show. The Berlin event’s star-studded line-up included performances by Katy Perry, Lana Del Rey, Sean Paul, Taio Cruz, Rammstein and Marilyn Manson.
Soundhead Company MD and FOH engineer Tim Ehrenfried, who only recently added the PRO2 to his inventory, explains, “In the past I have had excellent experiences working with MIDAS XL8 and PRO6 consoles, and I knew I wanted that great warm MIDAS sound for the event in recognition of the calibre of international acts performing. But the PRO2 at FOH gave me the added advantage of all the features of the big consoles in a practical compact footprint.”
Ehrenfried set up some 40 channels with wireless microphones for each artist, with additional inputs coming from all of the live acts and 10 playback tracks from the OB truck. He created individual scenes for each act and used rehearsal time to adjust and save all settings and patches. The PRO2’s user-friendly design was one of a number of stand-out features for Ehrenfried. “Speed is a big issue in our business,” he says. “You don’t often have much time to create your setup, but working with POP(ulation) groups makes the whole thing very clear and the number of I/O boxes enables you to configure your system with both hardware and software individually for each application. Everything is where you expect it to be, and with just a few steps I could create a big set up with many channels.”
Having created and saved his settings in advance, Ehrenfried was free to enjoy mixing on the night, taking full advantage of the PRO2’s design, features and flexibility. “Best of all I liked being able to view all busses at once and to have easy access to all channels,” he says. “The dynamic EQ, which I applied to the vocals, is a wonderful device, as is the internal compressor with its many available modes. It sounded great and it is the real MIDAS sound - very warm, and the EQ could be analogue.”
The MIDAS sound may have inspired the choice of PRO consoles, but it was reliability that confirmed their deployment for the prestigious event, which was also broadcast and streamed live to an international audience. “Next to the sound it is very important that I can trust the system to deliver,” says Ehrenfried, “and that is just what these consoles do.”
Photo: Tim Ehrenfried with the MIDAS PRO2 at FOH at the Echo Awards