Midas Consoles

Midas is a company that designs professional audio consoles. Founded in London in 1970 by Jeff Byers and Charles Brooke, today the company is part of the Music Tribe group of brands. Midas consoles are used by audio engineers for live sound mixing. Applications for these consoles includes Front of House (FOH) and monitor console positions. Midas also markets the digital audio distribution components that are commonly used with their digital consoles as stand-alone digital snakes, or larger multi-site audio distribution networks. Originally founded in 1970 by Jeff Byers and Charles Brooke as Midas Amplification, a London manufacturer of solid state guitar amps, the company relocated near Euston Station in London, next door to Martin Audio, in 1972, and began producing the PR System modular mixer in 1974. Midas mixers were adopted the tour sound market, and used by Clair Brothers Audio on the concert tours of Elvis Presley, Yes (band), Billy Joel, and The Beach Boys. Pink Floyd used Midas consoles on their Animals Tour in 1977 and The Wall Tour in 1979, and Frank Zappa used Midas consoles on his 1980 World Tour. Midas experienced success in the musical theatre market as well, with their consoles used for productions of Evita and Cats. Midas launched the XL, the first of a series of large-format professional touring consoles, at the New York AES Convention in 1986. Development of the XL was costly, and in December 1987 the assets of Midas Audio Systems Ltd. were purchased by Klark Teknik. Under this new ownership, Midas released the XL2 in 1988, the XL3 in 1990, and the XL4 in 1995. The XL3 and XL4 established Midas as a leading live console manufacturer for the next two decades, and the XL series would grow to include the XL200, and XL250, as well as smaller models targeted at the club and regional sound market. Beginning in 1998, Midas introduced the Heritage series consoles, including the H3000, H2000, H1000, and H4000. Midas introduced their first digital console, the flagship XL8, at Musikmesse Frankfurt in 2006.