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.