The XL8/5CC/IP Control Center from Midas provides an array of easy-to-use controls for the precise manipulation of audio. The control surface has been designed to emulate the fast access of an analog control surface by presenting things in a familiar, consistent and logical way so that experienced analog engineers can migrate easily to the digital surface. This is enhanced by visual representations on the GUI at the top of the control surface. This digital console features 112 input channels, 51 mix busses, and 96 kHz sample rate.
The XL8 Control Centre is built on a robust steel frame chassis that houses 5 bays, each of which is a discrete hardware module that can operate independently. Each bay has its own power supply, control surface modules, control surface processors, GUI processor, and GUI screen. The control surface and GUI processors for each bay are separately connected to the network on duplicated Ethernet links. Also housed within each bay are dual redundant master controller processors and dual redundant high-speed network routers (eight AES50 connections each).
Multiple hardware faults are tolerated by the XL8 Control Centre without loss of audio control due to the dual redundancy and N+ 1 method incorporated in the system. In addition, the modular nature of the bays and GUI independence allows flexibility in operation.