The sudden departure of John Oakley from Midas/Klark Teknik on 1 June appears to complete (or possibly continue) a cycle of high-profile exits since The Music Group (owner of Behringer) acquired the British brands in December 2009. Oakley is the fifth board member to depart since the takeover, as directors of Manufacturing, R&D and Sales & Marketing respectively have left the company in the past 18 months.

Prior to Oakley, the most recent departure from the company was Alex Cooper, the long-serving Director of Console Design, who left at the end of May. Winner of the prestigious Gottelier Award in 2009, Cooper’s design imprint has been central to the success of the company’s console products since the early 1990s.

What is perhaps more surprising is that none of these apparently key positions have been filled – at least not yet. In fairness, at the time of writing the departures of Oakley and Cooper were very recent, but the apparent continued absence of key guiding figures for presumably critical positions is curious, and leads inevitably to speculation about The Music Group (TMG)’s intentions for Midas/Klark Teknik (M/KT).

That the company should not need a manufacturing director suggests that UK manufacturing is to cease or significantly decline, and given TMG’s pioneering position in Far East manufacturing it is easy to conclude that most or all M/KT products will soon be made overseas. While certainly not a negative per se (as most pro audio brands have at least some offshore-sourced products), it does not bode well for the future of the shop-floor employees at the Kidderminster factory.

The apparent lack of a figurehead to steer their R&D suggests that this role has been subsumed by TMG. This may be a very good thing, as the group clearly has the ability to design and manufacture products which are successful and profitable. What is less clear is whether this incumbent can or will absorb the design and performance ethos that kept the M/KT brands at the very top of the industry tree for so long. There is a vast gulf between an £80 dual compressor and a £125,000 mixing console, and success in the latter is not by any means guaranteed by success in the former.

Former Sales & Marketing Director David Cooper retains a connection with the company via his continuing role as their distribution agent for Asia, but his old role remains ostensibly unfilled. M/KT appears to have kept (at least thus far) its own distribution channels, so the daily sales and marketing responsibility presumably remains in-house, but with whom is unclear. The primary public ‘faces’ of the company in recent times have been the effervescent duo of Richard Ferriday and Jason Kelly, Brand Development Manager and Technical Sales Manager respectively.

Perhaps most peculiar is the complete absence of any statement from TMG about the board-level changes that have been wrought at Kidderminster, the most recent mention of M/KT on its website being the formal acquisition announcement from December 2009. It’s hard to imagine that such seismic changes have not affected the business but perhaps The Big B operates a ‘No news is good news – or at least, not bad news’ policy.

The majority of responses from the industry when news of the acquisition originally broke suggested that Behringer would take M/KT far downmarket. Events since seem not to bear that out, at least not as far as their console business is concerned: the company has since successfully launched three Pro-series digital consoles (all downsized variants of the flagship XL8), which while perhaps not ubiquitous, do seem to have at least consolidated Midas’s position in the professional digital console market (especially given the company’s very late entry) and been generally well received. Perhaps most tellingly, the Midas Pro-series and XL8 systems are considered by many engineers to be simply the best-sounding digital consoles presently available, a dominant market position that they held almost in perpetuity within the analogue domain, and which underlines its success in managing the migration of technologies.

The status of Klark Teknik is harder to define, with only 15 products in the current range, two of which are software suites and three of which are clearly derivatives of the digital console programme. Development of the successful Square One range appears to have stalled at three products, though it must be stressed that the global market for all outboard processing has been fundamentally altered by the rise in digital mixing systems.

Naturally it is TMG’s prerogative to say as much or as little as they like about structural changes within group companies. Any statement can be misinterpreted or misconstrued, but it’s hard to imagine any other pro audio manufacturer keeping completely silent about changes of this nature, especially when so many occur in such a short time. Such a void will inevitably be filled with speculation and rumour, and human nature (or at least the derivative of it that pervades this business) will determine that most if not all associated speculation will be negative.

Or perhaps TMG sides corporately with Oscar Wilde in believing that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about...

Our source, Audio Boy, is an audio industry insider, following the Fast-and-Wide brief.