GLD vs. Pro1 Comparison: by Peter Wituszynski
. The EQ section has just 3 knobs, with those arrow buttons to pick the band you’re editing. This took some getting used to, but I don’t have a problem with it. Once you’re in a detail view of the input processing, touching any knob in the channel strip will display the view for that function. EG, if you’re looking at the comp, touching the EQ knob switches you to the EQ view. The input “channel strip” has more features in the Pro1, and the screen shows you things like Aux send levels and bus assignments, whereas the GLD only shows you that information in the “Routing” screen.
Auxes/Busses:
The GLD has a flexible bussing system. You go to the config page and tell it how many Mono Aux, Stereo Aux, Groups, and Matrixes you want. It then tells you how many you can actually use, based on its output and mix bus limitations. In other words, if you don’t use matrixes, you can convert them into groups or auxes without sacrificing functionality. It will do up to 20 mix busses, so that’s the limit for any one category as well as the combined total.
The Pro1 seems less flexible at first, but it can actually do a little more. It has 16 physical “Aux” buttons, and 8 physical “Matrix” buttons. But it turns out that in Midas-Land, a “Matrix” is actually just an Aux, except you can mix other auxes into it. If you don’t use matrixes, pretend that the label isn’t there, and you have 24 Aux sends! Neat! But you can also set different modes for the “aux” sends, such as “group” and “mix-minus”, which are both fancy things that I don’t understand. Link 2 Auxes together and get up to 12 stereo sends.
Both consoles come ready to go for an LCR mix. In the GLD, you have to tell it if you’re doing LR, LCR, or “LMR” before you can route things and start mixing. The Midas just shows up with an LCR mix and you can leave the C channel unpatched or not assign things to it.
Auxes:
The way auxes mix is very different, too. On the GLD, every fader has a “mix” button alongside the “select”, “solo” and “mute”. You can mix an Aux by pressing “mix” on that aux. The board does a fader-flip, where each input becomes the send to that aux. You can also mix auxes by pressing “mix” on an INPUT fader, which turns the Aux masters into all the sends for just that input. This is the way I prefer to mix for sound checks, as it is very easy to dial instruments into everyone’s mix at once.
The Pro1 lays out Aux masters on the master fader bank, but selecting them only gives you the output processing. In order to mix an Aux, you have to press it’s corresponding (and unlabeled) button, #1-16 on the upper part of the console. This means that instead of seeing the label that you have set, you need to know the number that each Aux corresponds with. After pressing the button, the board does a fader flip and your input faders become contributions to the Aux. However, this is the only way of mixing auxes. There is no way to mix all the aux sends for a particular input channel at once. The Pro2 has a bank of 8 knobs to give you aux sends on the selected channel, but these are absent in the Pro1. That flies in the face of my sound check method, and is a little bit slower for some situations. It also means a lot more flipping through channels, adding wear and tear to the surface.
GEQ:
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