The largest of America’s pops orchestras, the 65-piece Philly POPS recently opened the show at Wawa Welcome America, Philadelphia’s Fourth of July celebrations. With a repertoire of songs from Colonial times to the current charts, the orchestra used Midas’ the Pro X flagship mixing console for FOH duties.
Against the backdrop of Independence Hall, the POPS worked through a lively programme of well-known tunes to an audience that has grown over the past eight years to number more than 100,000. Andre Houser, chief engineer of Houser Audio, has overseen the sound design throughout, and served as FOH engineer for The Philly POPS.
‘The PRro X is the perfect solution for the Philly POPS,’ he says. ‘In choosing a console I looked at preamps, input count, and functionality – the Pro X gives me a great preamp that makes the strings very warm and lush and gives an unamplified feel to the orchestra. The 168 inputs allows me to touch every instrument, and the functionality allows me get to any one of those inputs quickly. It was the natural choice.’
