NAMM 2014: TOP GEAR FROM MIDAS
By Graeme Hague
24 January 2014
Midas reckons it’s brought the Roll Royce of consoles to NAMM by releasing the M32 Digital Mixing Console – or a Bentley, to be correct. Sporting a design created by no less than Bentley Motors Industrial the console makes use of high-performance material such as carbon fibre and… hmm, “aluminum” (let’s not get too excited about that). The M32 is a 40-input digital mixer with a wide range of connectivity options aimed at both live sound and recording environments. Beneath the surface the M32 features the same microphone preamplifiers as the Pro Series consoles and its “1 million lifecycle” Midas Pro Faders, and the console is 96 kHz ready with 192 kHz AD/DA converters. The M32 has Ultranet for integrating with the new Turbosound iQ Series active loudspeakers or IEM systems. The mixer’s DSP gives you an 8-slot stereo effects engine and digital networking is possible. Okay, the Midas pedigree is definitely there. Even so, while The Music Group has done a good job so far of keeping some distance between Behringer products and its subsidiaries like Midas, Klark Teknik and others, on this occasion it’s hard not to connect dots between the Midas M32 and Behringer’s X-32 console, albeit possibly all under the hood, so to speak. Hey, there’s an idea. With Bentley having a hand in the design of the M32 we’ll get the lads from Top Gear to review it. You might see “system crash” given a whole new meaning. Right now, information links on www.midasconsoles.com are dodgy. Wait for the M32 to scroll through the website’s header. That one works.
Australian Distributor: National Audio Systems sales@nationalaudio.com.au
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