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[Doug Fowler]

Big I/O count, expandable. $42K USD

http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/midas_introduces_new_pro_x_digital_console_with_neutron_engine/

[Justice C. Bigler]

Big I/O count, expandable. $42K USD

There's GOTTA be some fine print there somewhere...

[jason misterka]

There's GOTTA be some fine print there somewhere...

Each channel can only be assigned to one aux and you can only use one aux at a time.

[Josh Hana]

The ability to upgrade from a Pro3/6/9 is huge. That, and the price tag. Wow.

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

I'm sure that price tag includes no I/O of any kind. Just the surface and engine. Add a few DL431s and DL451s and you'll be north of $70k without breaking a sweat.

However, a great product from Midas. Hopefully the surface and UI design have improved a bit. Thats currently what puts me off the midas consoles...

[Thomas Lamb]

I'm sure that price tag includes no I/O of any kind. Just the surface and engine. Add a few DL431s and DL451s and you'll be north of $70k without breaking a sweat.

However, a great product from Midas. Hopefully the surface and UI design have improved a bit. Thats currently what puts me off the midas consoles...

Yes but add just a couple DL251 (don't get me wrong I think the DL431s are awesome)and your still under 50. Your not going to get anything with similar io for that price!

[Thomas Lamb]

From the recent research I've done. The 3,6,9 are not as functionally fast on monitors as some other options nor did it really have enough outputs. However the x seems to have fixed that! They definately upped the ch count but really updated the output count!! Looks like you can mix 50 stereo mixes now. I don't need (nor do I really want) to mix 50 sends but if I did if prefer dos Equis.

[Scott Helmke]

There's GOTTA be some fine print there somewhere...

Late summer? OK everybody, don't buy anything from the other guys for the next six months! We promise an amazing console for dirt cheap!!!   

[Andrew Cunningham]

Big Mick introduces the Pro X and Neutron:

http://youtu.be/KuBM4M7tEZg

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

Looks interesting!

Personally, I'm really not a fan of the Pro1/2/3/6/9/X surfaces (although the output section of the Pro X is an improvement). I also feel like if you wan't to put out an SD7 competitor (although for a lot of reasons, it isn't really...) then you need more than 29 faders on offer, especially when only 16 of them can be for inputs, and stereo things take 2 faders. On a large format desk, I also want full EQ control. I don't want to scroll through bands like I'm on an LS9.

That being said, sonically I love the Midas products, and they have a great feature set, so I'm interested to see where this goes and what the uptake is in the industry. You'd think that given the price point, there will be a lot of XL8s for sale, and every Pro9 (and probably half the Pro6s) will be upgraded to ProX asap.

One of the the interesting things with this product though is that it highlights a downside with the AES50 system when it comes to availability of all those I/O points. Let me explain:

I'm of the opinion that the industry will head further toward modularity. Soon we won't run a 12 pair to the RF rack, we'll have an I/O box in the rack, and it will just sit on our audio 'backbone'. Midas now have a very comprehensive range of boxes to help you get closer to this goal. And the 15X range are very reasonably priced.
However, you have 8 AES50 connections on the Neutron. Thats theoretically 192 in + 192 out. However, its actually impossible to connect that many channels unless you use all DL451s with 8in+8out jack cards. Any other rack combination ends up with a bunch of inaccessible AES50 'paths'
If you use 16x8 DL153 racks, and cable them all redundantly, then you can only get 64 in and 32 out into the engine...
If you use mic splitters, you could say have 3 of them cabled redundantly for 72 inputs, but you'd need the last 2 for some outputs, otherwise you'd have none...
etc...

Equally, at the console end, you only have 3 AES50 ports. So lets say you got a bunch of 431 mic splits, didn't do redundant cabling, and so got yourself 6 splits (144 in). You can't do a virtual soundcheck at FOH, because the most you can get into a recorder is 72ch via the AES50.

So....

I'm excited about Neutron, but I think its capabilities won't be fully realised until you can use the I/O in a better way.

[Joao Santos]

This means that XL8 will be phase out?
Or the XL8 can use the new Neutron DSP and make it more powerful.

The XL8 surface is amazing it will be great to use with the new Neutron DSP. 

[Thomas Lamb]

Looks interesting!

Personally, I'm really not a fan of the Pro1/2/3/6/9/X surfaces (although the output section of the Pro X is an improvement). I also feel like if you wan't to put out an SD7 competitor (although for a lot of reasons, it isn't really...) then you need more than 29 faders on offer, especially when only 16 of them can be for inputs, and stereo things take 2 faders. On a large format desk, I also want full EQ control. I don't want to scroll through bands like I'm on an LS9.

That being said, sonically I love the Midas products, and they have a great feature set, so I'm interested to see where this goes and what the uptake is in the industry. You'd think that given the price point, there will be a lot of XL8s for sale, and every Pro9 (and probably half the Pro6s) will be upgraded to ProX asap.

One of the the interesting things with this product though is that it highlights a downside with the AES50 system when it comes to availability of all those I/O points. Let me explain:

I'm of the opinion that the industry will head further toward modularity. Soon we won't run a 12 pair to the RF rack, we'll have an I/O box in the rack, and it will just sit on our audio 'backbone'. Midas now have a very comprehensive range of boxes to help you get closer to this goal. And the 15X range are very reasonably priced.
However, you have 8 AES50 connections on the Neutron. Thats theoretically 192 in + 192 out. However, its actually impossible to connect that many channels unless you use all DL451s with 8in+8out jack cards. Any other rack combination ends up with a bunch of inaccessible AES50 'paths'
If you use 16x8 DL153 racks, and cable them all redundantly, then you can only get 64 in and 32 out into the engine...
If you use mic splitters, you could say have 3 of them cabled redundantly for 72 inputs, but you'd need the last 2 for some outputs, otherwise you'd have none...
etc...

Equally, at the console end, you only have 3 AES50 ports. So lets say you got a bunch of 431 mic splits, didn't do redundant cabling, and so got yourself 6 splits (144 in). You can't do a virtual soundcheck at FOH, because the most you can get into a recorder is 72ch via the AES50.

So....

I'm excited about Neutron, but I think its capabilities won't be fully realised until you can use the I/O in a better way.

I think there may be something we haven't seen yet. They make mention of a DL231 which gives you 2 independent malignant gain control (presumably adding to the DL431 concept) it says with 6 you get 144io so 24/24 units.

[John durisko]

Looks interesting!

Personally, I'm really not a fan of the Pro1/2/3/6/9/X surfaces (although the output section of the Pro X is an improvement). I also feel like if you wan't to put out an SD7 competitor (although for a lot of reasons, it isn't really...) then you need more than 29 faders on offer, especially when only 16 of them can be for inputs, and stereo things take 2 faders. On a large format desk, I also want full EQ control. I don't want to scroll through bands like I'm on an LS9.

That being said, sonically I love the Midas products, and they have a great feature set, so I'm interested to see where this goes and what the uptake is in the industry. You'd think that given the price point, there will be a lot of XL8s for sale, and every Pro9 (and probably half the Pro6s) will be upgraded to ProX asap.

One of the the interesting things with this product though is that it highlights a downside with the AES50 system when it comes to availability of all those I/O points. Let me explain:

I'm of the opinion that the industry will head further toward modularity. Soon we won't run a 12 pair to the RF rack, we'll have an I/O box in the rack, and it will just sit on our audio 'backbone'. Midas now have a very comprehensive range of boxes to help you get closer to this goal. And the 15X range are very reasonably priced.
However, you have 8 AES50 connections on the Neutron. Thats theoretically 192 in + 192 out. However, its actually impossible to connect that many channels unless you use all DL451s with 8in+8out jack cards. Any other rack combination ends up with a bunch of inaccessible AES50 'paths'
If you use 16x8 DL153 racks, and cable them all redundantly, then you can only get 64 in and 32 out into the engine...
If you use mic splitters, you could say have 3 of them cabled redundantly for 72 inputs, but you'd need the last 2 for some outputs, otherwise you'd have none...
etc...

Equally, at the console end, you only have 3 AES50 ports. So lets say you got a bunch of 431 mic splits, didn't do redundant cabling, and so got yourself 6 splits (144 in). You can't do a virtual soundcheck at FOH, because the most you can get into a recorder is 72ch via the AES50.

So....

I'm excited about Neutron, but I think its capabilities won't be fully realised until you can use the I/O in a better way.

AES50 by spec is 24x24 @96k. So with 8 ports on the DSP rack that is 192x192 of routing. The console will mix 168 inputs, this allows for 1? redundant port! I can't stand the fact that there is still only 16 input faders. Where I work, we have a Pro9. I don't find myself using the area above the faders for direct access to eq, dynamics... Why didn't Midas make that another 16 input faders. The Pro9 at 80 inputs is tough enough to bounce around with very few faders let alone doubling the count. I can't tell from the pictures I have seen but it does look like they included the "EXTEND" like found on the PRO2.

As for the Mic Splitter DL431, There is a smaller version DL231, 2-AES50 independent outputs and only 1 analog set of 24.

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

I think there may be something we haven't seen yet. They make mention of a DL231 which gives you 2 independent malignant gain control (presumably adding to the DL431 concept) it says with 6 you get 144io so 24/24 units.

Sure, but that is without redundant cabling of those units... Thats my point.

With an SD7, I can get 1392 optical I/O plus 5 Madi ports to hit the console WITH redundancy.

With AES50, I can get 192 In with the right racks, sure. But no cabling redundancy at all. And no way to record those inputs via direct outs

[Lefteris Neokosmidis]

AES50 by spec is 24x24 @96k. So with 8 ports on the DSP rack that is 192x192 of routing. The console will mix 168 inputs, this allows for 1? redundant port! I can't stand the fact that there is still only 16 input faders. Where I work, we have a Pro9. I don't find myself using the area above the faders for direct access to eq, dynamics... Why didn't Midas make that another 16 input faders. The Pro9 at 80 inputs is tough enough to bounce around with very few faders let alone doubling the count. I can't tell from the pictures I have seen but it does look like they included the "EXTEND" like found on the PRO2.

As for the Mic Splitter DL431, There is a smaller version DL231, 2-AES50 independent outputs and only 1 analog set of 24.

When the console is gonna be on production there will be a new 10 AES50 ports' card and 2 new card with MADI/DANT/Ethersound/Cobramet card installed besides the NEUTRON DSP cards.

[John durisko]

That makes a little more sense


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Chase McKnight]

Why didn't Midas make that another 16 input faders. The Pro9 at 80 inputs is tough enough to bounce around with very few faders let alone doubling the count. I can't tell from the pictures I have seen but it does look like they included the "EXTEND" like found on the PRO2.

Dear All,

Please note that the PRO X console has included the Extend button, allowing all 26 faders to be used to navigate the inputs. 

Hope this helps!

Best,
Chase McKnight
Specialist, Channel Marketing
MUSIC Group
MIDAS

[Haniel Trisna]

I have several questions for Chase or anyone at Midas about this console.

I'm very interested in putting one of these consoles for studio mixing. The only concern I have, is ProTools HD only has HD Madi interface, not AES50. With the DNS9650 what signal degradation will I encounter when sending 96 kHz Madi tracks to the console being that it's getting SRCd?

Can / Should I clock the console to my PT Rig's master word clock?

The 42K price includes no IO ? I need no analog IO, just Madi connectivity.

Dear All,

Please note that the PRO X console has included the Extend button, allowing all 26 faders to be used to navigate the inputs. 

Hope this helps!

Best,
Chase McKnight
Specialist, Channel Marketing
MUSIC Group
MIDAS

[Chris Johnson [UK]]

I also have a related question which is:

Is it currently, or will it ever be possible, to control the routing of AES audio sources on the Neutron engine without the surface connected?

This is of particular interest to those of us looking at broadcast solutions...

[Chase McKnight]

With the DNS9650 what signal degradation will I encounter when sending 96 kHz Madi tracks to the console being that it's getting SRCd?

Can / Should I clock the console to my PT Rig's master word clock?

The 42K price includes no IO ? I need no analog IO, just Madi connectivity.

Dear Haniel,

The DN9650 (or DN9652) will not degrade your sound.  In your proposed scenario, its purpose is to solely convert one digital protocol to another.  The sample rate and bit depth remain the same between the protocols. 

You can certainly clock the console to your PT rig's master clock or vice versa.  My suggestion would be to try both and listen to what sounds best!

The PRO X desk currently has a MSRP of $41,999 and includes the control surface and NEUTRON DSP engine. 

Is it currently, or will it ever be possible, to control the routing of AES audio sources on the Neutron engine without the surface connected?

Dear Chris,

What are you trying to accomplish? The NEUTRON DSP engine does all the processing (EQ, dynamics, summing, etc) and is seamlessly integrated into the control surface.


Best,
Chase McKnight
Specialist, Channel Marketing
MUSIC Group
MIDAS

[Haniel Trisna]

Chase, can busses be sent to other busses? Can busses be routed as inputs to channels (to be routed to other busses)?

Is the new digital card (madi, Aviom, etc) that's suposedly pluggable to the Neutron Chassis included as standard or going to be optional ?

This will negate the need for separate DN9650s to me.

[Tim Padrick]

The Neutron's blank panel will be replaced by 10 AES50 ports and two card slots (per a show video with Kyle Chirnside).

[Chase McKnight]

Dear Haniel,

Yes, busses can be sent to other busses. On the Patching page, if you select Busses (left side), you can route an Aux Send or Matrix to an Input Channel (right side).  Please note that you must be careful as a feedback loop could be created easily.

As soon as information is finalized (regarding NEUTRON DSP I/O options), I'll happily share with the community.

Best,
Chase McKnight
Specialist, Channel Marketing
MUSIC Group
MIDAS

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