2 Midas XL8 Audio Consoles – USED

Description

The Midas XL8 represents yet another large step in the maturation of the live sound digital console. With layout cues, sonic attributes and microphone preamps evolved directly from Midas’ universally lauded analog consoles, the XL8 has the potential to take the high-end live sound console market by storm.

Make no mistake, the XL8’s target audience is the high-end user. In fact, the XL8 is Midas’ new flagship product, retiring the XL4 analog console that has had a place in many high-end tours and installs throughout its 10-year product life.

Development of the XL8 was fast-tracked resulting in a surprisingly short, three-year cycle. Paramount in the design brief of the XL8 was the issue of reliability, and as such, heroic steps have been taken in the areas of redundancy and modularity. Indeed, no single point of failure can bring down the XL8 due to distributed network hardware, multiple linked processors, and duplicated cabling runs. Like many other devices these days, the XL8 is built on a Linux platform, which has proven to be both stable and secure, compared to other common operating systems.

In order to support the XL8 Midas has set up a global 24/7 phone support group with locations in the US, UK, Hong Kong, Japan, and Singapore to ensure that XL8 users have the resources necessary to deal with problems and concerns no matter their location. The level one technicians have XL8s on-site, and are able to duplicate configuration and operational issues in tandem with the user.

The standard configuration of the XL8 is as 96 channels, plus 16 aux mic/line inputs with a 24-bit, 96 kHz sampling rate. Larger connectivity configurations can also be specified, although the current maximum mix matrix is 112 x 51. Quite unlike an analog console which likely consists of just a power supply and a mixer surface, the XL8 system is the sum of multiple parts.