Allen and Heath ZED 10 question

casey campbell · Post by **casey campbell** » Fri Apr 22, 2011 7:51 am

is the usb out dual mono or just stereo?

i want to be able to lay down some quick ideas on my laptop and would like a small mixer for dual duty when i do little coffee house gigs too. i would like to be able to send out to 2 different mono tracks instead of just one stereo track. i know you could probably just pan, but im not for sure if i want to mess with that.

casey campbell · Post by **casey campbell** » Fri Apr 22, 2011 3:39 pm

nevermind. it turns out that it only sends stereo via usb. i went ahead and just got the focusrite pro 24. it's small, gets great reviews, and was really affordable.

KennyLusk · Post by **KennyLusk** » Sat Apr 23, 2011 7:02 am

too bad you pulled the trigger so quick. I have a zed14 and the usb is L/R and can be captured by your DAW as L/R or Stereo. The ADAC in the zed boards is really nice IMO. The difference between the 2 units of course is the zed's signal is 16 bit and the FR pro24 is 24 bit and probably has lower latency. Personally I'm fed up with driver issues, compatibility with "x" chipset...blah blah blah and literally enjoy the freedom of a simple usb codec. I don't really give a rat's a$$ if the signal is 16 bit, my tracks are sounding clean and pretty darn analog if you ask me.

One thing you'll be missing for sure with the FR pro 24 is the really sweet pre's you get out of the zed board. They would have ended your quest for new pre's for quite a long time IME.

jgimbel · Post by **jgimbel** » Mon Apr 25, 2011 10:51 pm

KennyLusk wrote:One thing you'll be missing for sure with the FR pro 24 is the really sweet pre's you get out of the zed board. They would have ended your quest for new pre's for quite a long time IME.

Are the pre's really that nice? I haven't done much research into these boards (yet) but I see their name pop up a lot, I'm definitely curious about an inexpensive board with great pre's, and I wasn't aware the ZED boards came in this few channels. I know this is debatably impossible online, but how would you describe the character of the pre's?

casey campbell · Post by **casey campbell** » Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:42 pm

I actually ran a session with a larger ZED about 8 months ago. The pres are really nice. They have a "magic" in the upper mids. That's one of the reasons why I wanted the smaller version originally, but the focusrite has 4 separate ins and 6 out with really nice dsp and solid drivers.

casey campbell · Post by **casey campbell** » Tue Apr 26, 2011 1:42 pm

I actually ran a session with a larger ZED about 8 months ago. The pres are really nice. They have a "magic" in the upper mids. That's one of the reasons why I wanted the smaller version originally, but the focusrite has 4 separate ins and 6 out with really nice dsp and solid drivers.

KennyLusk · Post by **KennyLusk** » Wed Apr 27, 2011 9:27 am

jgimbel wrote: Are the pre's really that nice? I haven't done much research into these boards (yet) but I see their name pop up a lot, I'm definitely curious about an inexpensive board with great pre's, and I wasn't aware the ZED boards came in this few channels. I know this is debatably impossible online, but how would you describe the character of the pre's?

IMO the pre's are very nice and compete very well with large studio grade consoles that I've heard. One of the first things I noticed was how fast the pre's handle transients, which inherently gave a new life to my mic locker. Much the same way having BLA's TweakHead mod on my 1814FW box enriched the "apparent" quality of my mic's. IMO this is accomplished through A&H's experience with design (topology) and a high quality power supply. You have to remember, A&H has been doing this for a long time and doing it well. So naturally their boards and pre's will be sonically heads above someone like m-audio, alesis, mackie, etc.

I would describe them as clean, fast, and open, with a hint of pure sweetness in the upper mids (as casey mentioned). It's a very quiet board capable of providing some really nice "air" when you open the throttle using the Gain knob. Lows are tight and can handle a little "growl" from your source very nicely without imparting it's own unwanted or unwelcome character in the way of lower-mid mud that seems to be a typical characteristic of a lot of pre's in this price range.

Also, there is nothing harsh whatsoever in the high's, they're relatively sweet. For me regarding the high's the big test was tracking with my AT 4041, which of course can be extremely/overly bright. When amp'd through the ZED the 4041 is tamed and sweetened while still remaining extremely transparent. Again, you can invite as much of your live room into the capture as you want by increasing Gain or keep early reflections under control by keeping the Gain low. There's plenty of power and plenty of headroom and when pushed the pre's can distort rather nicely. "Robustly" isn't a word I'd use, but they can at least handle being pushed a little.

The EQ is totally usable, not introducing any audible hiss or noise when engaged, and the sweeping mids feature is huge. Having inserts is nice as well.

Also, if you decide to use the USB feature it's as easy as pie - plug n play. And even though the usb is only 1.1, latency isn't that horrible and the converters are of excellent quality (something I've grown to be picky about). Perhaps it's a 16 bit thing but the sound from the usb connection is pretty damn analog IMO.

jgimbel · Post by **jgimbel** » Thu Apr 28, 2011 11:10 pm

Thanks for the info! I'm getting really interested in the ZED boards! I've got 8 channels of line-ins on my interface, and it sounds like getting a ZED board would be a great bang-for-buck way to get nice pres with nice EQ and inserts. Kind of like getting a Sytek but with added features (not necessarily sound-wise, just as far as getting great pres for a great price). Now I'm going to have to look into if any of the smaller boards have direct outs!

jhharvest · Post by **jhharvest** » Mon May 09, 2011 1:12 pm

We were going through our old stuff today to see what needs to be sold. There was a Zed14 I'd marked earlier as 'noisy'. The preamps are noisy at any gain above the 0 mark. The master output is noisy at any setting. I'd actually tried to use it as a sub-mixer for a bigger production but gave up because of the noise floor.

The other two mixers I put up on the get-rid-of list was a Mackie 1640 (didn't like the EQs) and a Yamaha Promix 01. Actually the son of a talent (maybe age 10?) seemed really keen to buy the Promix. "Does it have compressors and EQs? How many channels?" I think that's a weird desk to start learning with.

casey campbell · Post by **casey campbell** » Mon May 09, 2011 2:32 pm

hmmm. i used a zed 14 before and i must say that it was dead quiet. i'd recheck it. if it's still noisy, i'd say you have a faulty unit.

jhharvest · Post by **jhharvest** » Mon May 09, 2011 10:12 pm

Yeah, that could well be. I'd suspected that too. Cheers for confirming that. We'll probably still sell it cheap - I've only tried to use it once in the past year and we've got other desks for submixing anyway.

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Allen and Heath ZED 10 question

Allen and Heath ZED 10 question

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