DiGiCo and KLANG give Midas golden touch
- Details
Midas first came across KLANG a few years ago at the ProLight + Sound trade show. “I was heading somewhere else when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a booth with something to do with IEMs. Or maybe it was just the brand’s colour that attracted me,” he says. “I took a brochure, but at that time I thought the technology was an interesting start-up amongst many others and I didn’t think I would be a user one day.”
When Midas first joined his current band, a few of them used IEMs in mono. He switched them to stereo and a little later the entire band, except one guitar player, were using stereo IEMs. Still he felt he could achieve a better result. Despite developing a show file that provided consistent results from show to show, there were still occasional signal masking issues on certain arrangements and in particular acoustic environments when combined with the PA.
“When I found that our local distributor had a KLANG demo unit, of course I contacted them to ask if I could try it,” he says. “When I heard the results, I knew it would be really hard to go back to stereo. It’s very addictive. The sound environment created by the system feels so natural that in a few seconds you forget you’re wearing IEMs.
“Placing sources along the vertical axis makes it possible to get a ‘straight in the face’ sound without changing levels; it’s so natural that it feels like the system is playing a joke with you. This is because our brains have adapted to stereo mixes, so if you have a conversation with a musician, you know where they are and look at them even if their voice is panned left or right in the mix you’re working on. But with KLANG, when they start speaking you turn your head to where their voice is coming from as it creates a natural acoustic environment and your brain believes what you’re hearing.”
Whilst the change to DiGiCo necessitated a different approach, Midas has found Macros, in combination with smart keys, to be “an amazing feature”, making show control and preparation extremely flexible. He also appreciates the 12 faders per bank, the clarity of the mix, and the line check option in the audio I/O tab.
“In general, using DiGiCo has driven me to re-think my typical approach to mixing, simply because I had a very different tool in my hands, but I found it became much easier to control monitor mixes for the band,” he says.
Midas also works for d&b’s Russian subsidiary which has recently launched a Soundscape demo room in Moscow. “Soon we’ll have a DiGiCo console in there from our Russian DiGiCo and KLANG distributor, Aris Pro, then I’ll have a space to experiment,” he says. “One thing I have in mind is to use KLANG as a monitor for preparing a show for Soundscape without using any loudspeakers.”
