The PRO3, which was purchased at PALME 2011, was used on monitors while the PRO9, purchased at PALME 2012, took care of FOH. The event was attended by nearly 300,000 people and saw acts including Don Moen, Israel Houghton, Fred Hammond, Deitrick Haddon and many more deliver sharp performances.
"We purchased the PRO9 as a natural progression from the PRO3, which we'd bought the year before." explains Bamishile Dipo, sound engineer from Solution Media and Infotech Ltd. "We decided on the PRO9 because the PRO3 had so totally met the expectation of our sound team in terms of the quality of its sound and its unique features and durability."
In house engineer for the show, Ralph Rivera, who flew in especially from the US and was faced with the challenging task of kicking off the show at 7pm on Friday evening and seeing it through until 6am on Saturday.
"The festival featured multiple sound engineers on both Monitors and FOH. We needed a console that any mix engineer could find their way around easily, even at first use," continues Dipo. "In addition the event could not afford for the console to crash in the middle of the 12 hour show. MIDAS consoles have always proved themselves to be extremely stable and efficient and there was no point in time when any of the redundancy features kicked in."
Chicco Hiranandani, Midas business development manager for distributor NMK Electronics comments, "Bamishile Dipo and his team have become frequent visitors to Dubai. They had purchased the PRO3 at PALME 2011 and then they saw the PRO9 at PALME 2012. Bamishile was keen to use both consoles for the show."
Hiranandani also provided on site support during the rehearsals and the actual show. "My task was to provide support to the engineers from the US as majority of them were using the consoles for the first time. The show ran for almost 12 hours without a hitch and all the engineers were able to focus on their task. A major reason for this is the way the consoles are laid out physically. Although digital they have an analogue layout making it very natural for engineers to adopt a fluid workflow that soon becomes second nature."
(Jim Evans)
