Midas Digital Systems Installed into Guangzhou Opera House Located in the new city of Pearl River, the Guangzhou Opera House has become one of China's three biggest theatres. Constructed from 12,000 tons of steel on a 70,000 sq. m. site, the Opera House includes 1,800-seat and 400-seat theatres, both of which have been installed with Midas digital systems and analog consoles, and Klark Teknik signal processing. The Guangzhou Opera House was designed by London-based architect Zaha Hadid to represent two boulder-like structures of different sizes, with a theatre located in each. The Grand Theatre in the main structure has been installed with an XL8 live performance system in the control room, together with a Heritage 2000. A second XL8 has been added to the networked system for stage monitoring, and can be moved depending on the application. A PRO6 live audio system and a Verona have been installed into the control room of the smaller, multipurpose theatre, and there are two Venice 160s in the rehearsal studio and one in the news room. Mr. Zhou Xucun is front-of-house engineer at the Guangzhou Opera House. He explains that the decision to choose Midas consoles came after countless discussions and technical debates by audio experts: "Midas digital consoles have retained the legendary Midas audio quality, adding the power and convenience of onboard FX and dynamics processing while retaining their familiarly-laid out work surfaces, which make them extremely convenient to operate," he says. "The 24bit/96kHz sample rate is unrivalled by many other brands of digital mixing console. As for the powerful onboard FX, the EQ, preamps, and general flexibility of the systems make even complicated productions just a breeze. "I always recommend the XL8 to other sound engineers now. After simple training, visiting engineers can operate the system with ease, and without having to change their way of thinking to feel comfortable. The stability, flexibility and reliability combined with ease and familiarity are just amazing." Since the Opera House opened, the Midas XL8 has been used for FOH on almost every live performance, including the opera Mulan, the opening ceremony of the 9th China Arts Festival, concerts by famous Chinese tenor Wang Hongwei, singer Zhu Zheqin and the 2010 Chinese Film Awards. 
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