Allen & Heath Zed14 - thumbs up

[David Polich]

I picked up an Allen & Heath Zed 14 mixer today, to serve as my "back-up" mixer while
my main mixer, an old Soundcraft Spirit 328, is in the shop for the zillionth time.

Happy to report that the ZED14 is an excellent product. Very, very low noise floor, even with
all trims and faders up. A teensy bit hyped in the 5 to 6khz region, but otherwise very transparent.
Doesn't "break up" when you run inputs up to unity and push the master faders above Unity - in other words,
there's about 8 db of headroom above Unity Gain on the master.

6 mono inputs with Mic/Line ins, and 4 stereo inputs with trims (one usually doesn't see trims on stereo
inputs on a mixer at this price point). 4 aux sends, 2 are pre and 2 are post, and you can route all inputs to any of the auxes (again,
a nice feature not found on a lot of small consoles). The "Alt Out" can serve as a separate control room
out, although there's on small drawback - its outputs are RCA, I wish they were 1/4 inch balanced.
Not a deal killer, though.

Normally I use my Spirit 328 as a benchmark, I've mixed a lot of projects on it over the past
10 years and it's always sounded great, a lot like a big Euphonix console. If it didn't sound so
great I'd have ditched it long ago, as it has suffered component failure more times than I care
to admit.. Anyway, it didn't take me
long to get used to the sound of the Allen & Heath, which is a bit less focused in the midrange,
but still plenty good enough to mix on. One of the things I've found consistent in "low-budget"
small format mixers is the lack of depth and separation in a crowded/busy mix. The Allen & Heath
doesn't suffer from that at all, and I've tried plenty of other mixers in this class and price range - Mackie VLZ's, Yamahas,
Behringers, etc. Even the Trident 8T I bought (and later sold) didn't sound this good, and that board cost
three grand more.

Anyway, the Zed14 is only 400 bucks - plenty of bang for the buck. I highly recommend it.

[Tonio]

Thanks for the review David,
I've had my eyes on the zed 16 FW desk. Though $3K seems rather high, it does seem to be the only decent desk with multi channel FW capabilities that I know of.
If the zed14 is close to your Spirit 328, A&H has a winner line of mixers.

How does the USB work in tandem w/ DP?

T

[Tonio]

Thanks for the review David,
I've had my eyes on the zed 16 FW desk. Though $3K seems rather high, it does seem to be the only decent desk with multi channel FW capabilities that I know of.
If the zed14 is close to your Spirit 328 in the sound spectrum department, A&H has a winner line of mixers.

How does the USB work in tandem w/ DP?

T

[OldTimey]

zed 16 looks cool. too expensive.

zed 14 also looks pretty neat, thanks for the report, at just $400, i can't see bothering with anything else for a small format mixer.