Blink-182 Tours with Midas PRO6

	Jason Decter

For his first tour with the revitalized Blink-182, new front-of-house engineer Jason Decter<specified Midas' PRO6 digital mixing consoles from the Rat Sound inventory for both himself and for engineer Dave Ski's monitor world.

"I always loved the sound of Midas analog dating back before digital desks," Decter says, "but I've been mixing on other digitals for the past five years or so. This tour was my first time specifying Midas digital. And I'm not going to lie -- even though I'd had some training on it, I had a Midas XL4 lined up as a backup, just in case."

At the first rehearsal, Decter's fears were proven groundless. "As soon as I turned on the PRO6 and pulled up Travis Barker's kick drum, I was totally blown away," he recalls. "The sound is totally natural. The dual gain stages, with analog gain and digital trim, works great. The onboard compression and dynamics, the gating and key functions were all spot-on. It doesn't sound digital at all. When I got done with the drums, I just walked around the room listening, and it was amazing. Right then I knew the PRO6 was a whole different ballgame. I sent the XL4 back the next day."

In fact, the more Decter used the console, the more he came to appreciate its range of features, its flexibility, and ease of use. "I carry an outboard rack with me, with Allen Smart bus compressors for Travis' toms, kick and hat," Jason explains. "I love the fact that there's no need to worry about delay compensation; you don't even have to click a button. All your outboard effects are automatically time-aligned and phase coherent, just like an analog desk, so it sounds just like it would on a Midas XL4 or H3000."

That analog feel extends to the PRO6 onboard DSP as well. Decter points to the EQ section as another example: "There relationship between what's happening on the screen and what you're hearing is just much more realistic," he notes. "When you do 3 dB of gain reduction on this desk, you can actually hear it. A cut of 12dB is drastic, as it should be. So I can make very subtle but noticeable changes, or I can carve my sound like a turkey. That's just not the case on other digital consoles I've used."

Decter quickly learned to configure his PRO6 to emulate his preferred console setup. He uses the console's POPulation Groups to create one-touch access to various inputs, such as all the vocals, Travis Barker's two drum kits, or the three classic TR808 drum machines he uses. But Decter takes it a step further by routing the group to the Area B faders on the right-hand side, leaving the main fader bank unaffected. "Area B is a great tool, and there are a lot of ways you can use it. For instance, I put all my stereo effects returns in the same POP Group, then assign that group to Area B, so they all appear on the right-hand side, just like on an analog desk."

With his extensive background mixing on other digital desks, Decter's first thought was to create console scenes for each song. "I thought I would, because that's what I would have done with my old desk, setting up different plug-ins for every tune," he notes. "But a pop-punk band like Blink doesn't need all that. I ended up with just three snapshots -- beginning, drum solo, and encore. So I have all the fader changes and mutes when I need them, but most of the show I'm mixing like I would on an analog desk. It's awesome."

While its ease of operation, flexibility, and rock-solid reliability of the PRO6 impressed Jason Decter from the start, it was the classic Midas sound quality that really set it apart. "I've been through the entire evolution of digital consoles," he relates. "The first ones had this clean, sterile sound that nobody liked. They've gotten better over the years, but it has always been a sort of a compromise for me. But Midas totally nailed it with the PRO6. It's an analog desk in a digital box. It's the first digital desk that has really gotten me back to the sound I love -- that warm, rich, tape-saturated sound of analog. I wouldn't want to mix on anything else."