Allen & Heath Launches Dedicated Home Recording Mixer

Microphone Mixer Allen & Heath has chosen the forthcoming Sound Recording Technology(SRT) show — part of the London International Music Show(LIMS) — to launch its first dedicated recording mixer forover 10 years. The Allen & Heath ZED-R16 combines an analogue recording mixer witha FireWire soundcard, MIDI controls and 'home-studio' routing soyou can build tracks in the studio, record live gigs, mix-down andremix. "Allen & Heath used to be well known for its recording mixers andthe last one we designed was the GS3000 — a traditionalanalogue mixer — nearly ten years ago," explains designer,Mike Griffin. "The way the recording musician works now is quitedifferent, so with the ZED-R16 I was looking to offer a productwhich addressed the world of digital recording. ZED-R16 offers aninterface to that world but also offers great analoguefunctionality — where you can mix in digital or analogue." The ZED-R16 can be employed as a standard analogue mixer whilerecording multi-track via FireWire or ADAT, a traditional inlinemixer recording with send and return per channel via FireWire, oras a MIDI controller via switchable channel faders. It features 16mono inputs, 2 stereo inputs, a high quality dual mic pre-amp,4-band fully-parametric EQ, 4 auxes, a stereo bus, 2 stereoreturns, and 18+18 FireWire I/O and 8+8 ADAT I/O. For studio work, there are control room speaker outputs, twoseparate artist monitor feeds, two analogue recording outputs inaddition to the digital interface, and a dedicated internalcondenser talkback mic. Each channel has its own independentsoundcard channel, so instruments can be recorded simultaneously(pre or post EQ) into the sequencer separately. To minimise clockjitter and provide synchronicity between the ZED-R16 and otherdevices, the mixer is equipped with the professional JetPLL?digital audio chipset.