Allen & Heath prove me wrong with new mixer

Maybe I do need a mixer. Or maybe it’s that Allen & Heath’s new ZED14 is the first mixer I’ve seen that is truly flexible enough to fit into a computer-based home studio without too many compromises.

The ZED14 offers a USB audio interface to connect directly to your Mac or PC. There are other mixers that allow you to use the mixer as an audio interface (Yamaha MW series, Alesis MultiMix series and Berhinger Xenyx series for example), but none offer the flexibility of the ZED14. The USB out can be fed via AUX 1 & 2, AUX 3 & 4 or Main mix pre fader. This allows for many possibilities when recording and mixing, including using the USB port as an effects send/return.

As mixer manufacturing companies get more in tune with the way musicians are recording, I’m sure we’ll see more products like this in the future.

The ZED14 comes bundled with Cakewalk’s SONAR LE. So if you’ve got a Windows based computer, you can set up a pretty nice little studio with just this mixer and the bundled software (and a few good mics). And you’ll also have a good live board too! I guess mixers aren’t completely out of style. -mc