Midas's technical support manager, Jason Kelly, who oversaw the upgrade, explained that he had a fairly comprehensive list of criteria that needed to be met by the new systems. "The first point was that they had to be small," he stated, "partly because space is at a premium in the room, and also because with five sets of loudspeakers on at once during a training course, we still needed to be able to hear ourselves think.
"The second criterion was that I wanted something that sounded full and rounded and that was able to reproduce the high resolution audio for which our consoles are famed. Previously we had used studio monitors for this type of application, as they sound great and offer all the detail. However, the problem is that they don't really sound like a PA, which is of course what most of our users work with every day. In short I was looking for a balance of small size, great sound quality and PA sound. We looked at a number of speakers, but nothing really fitted the bill until I came across the EMS-51 from EM Acoustics, which was ideal."
Once Kelly had narrowed down the choices from EM Acoustics, Mike Wheeler and Dave Kelland from EM Acoustics went up to Kidderminster to perform a series of listening tests in front of Midas UK customer support manager Rob Hughes, a number of the R&D team, and Jason himself. "The EM speakers performed exactly as I'd hoped," he confirmed. "They delivered the great sound we needed to show our consoles at their best, with the added advantage of being a 'neutral' brand that is unlikely to prejudice engineers one way or the other. We're delighted to have been able to work with another UK brand, and the support we've received from EM Acoustics has been exemplary."
EM Acoustics operations director Mike Wheeler was equally pleased. "It's great to have had the opportunity to work with Midas, and the fact that they chose EM Acoustics is a huge accolade for us. Everyone in the professional audio industry knows that Midas is a by-word for sonic quality, so it is a huge honour for us that Midas is reliant on EM Acoustics to reproduce that legendary quality."
(Jim Evans)
