Allen & Heath ZED-10 Live and Studio Mixer

ZED-10 is an amazing little desk for small band mixing. It is ultra portable for carrying to the gig, and can be used for recording live or in the studio. It comes with configurable USB audio in/out making it easy to capture stereo recordings.

• 4 mic/line inputs, 2 with Class A FET high impedance inputs
• Neutrik mic XLR
• Neutrik 1/4 inch jacks
• 3 band EQ with MusiQ
• 2 auxes
• Sound image pan
• Illuminated PFL indicator
• Stereo returns & playback
• All inputs with level control
• 12 bar meters
• Responsive 3-band, swept mid EQ with MusiQ
• 2 stereo sources with MP3 player compatibility
• Separate 2-track record outputs
• Stereo playback input for 2-track replay
• XLR main stereo outputs with inserts
• Comprehensive monitoring
• Configurable USB stereo audio in/out
• Stereo monitor outs
• 48V microphone phantom power
• DI level switching for sub mixing

Guitars can be plugged in directly to the mixer using the specially designed high-impedance inputs, while the mixer has two stereo inputs for MP3/CD players or keyboards. Equipped with professional XLR stereo outputs and a flexible monitoring section with headphone and speaker feed outputs.

USB audio flexibility
Getting audio to and from a computer easily is now a common requirement for live sound and music production. The way this has been implemented on ZED is super-flexible and super-easy! No longer do you need to fiddle around the back of your PC to get to the soundcard inputs, only to find that the levels are all wrong and noisy. Just plug in a USB lead to your ZED, select the USB routing on the mixer and the device on your computer and that’s it! CD quality audio to and from your PC or Mac. Switches and connection through jack socket terminals provide different send/return configurations:-

Send options

• Main Mix Left + Right (Post master Level)
• Aux + FX bus (Aux is a pre-fade send, FX is a post-fade send)
• Record Bus Left + Right (Separate stereo bus to Main Mix)

Return options

• To Playback input (through jack socket break contacts)
• To Stereo 2 channel (through jack socket break contacts)

Musiq
ZED-10 features a responsive 3-band, swept mid frequency EQ design which utilizes MusiQ – with optimized slope (or Q factor) for equalizing individual instruments.

Guitar DI
ZED-10’s pre-amps are similar in design to the MixWizard range of mixers, but with a twist! Inputs 3 & 4 have a high impedance jack input capable of taking either a normal line level or a low level input from a guitar pickup. These newly designed inputs have been crafted with the aim of replicating the sound of a classic guitar or instrument tube pre-amp in a combo or head amp. An extremely high input impedance ensures loading on pick-ups is minimal and a Class A FET (field effect transistor) circuit powered from 48V is employed to give the valve-like gain stage. There is a gain “Boost” switch associated with the guitar inputs which boosts gain by 26dB to cater for instruments with very low level outputs and the overdrive characteristics of the guitar inputs are very similar to a valve (tube) circuit, being asymmetric and soft. All this makes for a wonderfully natural sound to be reproduced from the instrument, full of warmth and character.