The ZED-420 has a fantastic pedigree which comes from nearly 40 years of making mixing desks for the professional sound community. The audio circuitry is based on years of continual development and refinement and the performance of all the elements within the mixer is has been perfected to ensure the very best sound quality possible.
This is a mixer for anyone, from entry-level to professionals, who appreciates fantastic sound, rugged build quality and imaginative feature sets. It’ll be equally happy running your gig on stage, recording live or mixing down in your studio at home.
Allen & Heath have teamed up with major software supplier, Cakewalk, to bundle its SONAR LE music creation and audio production software with ZED, giving you a fantastic, high spec digital audio workstation. The ZED 4-Bus series takes inspiration from different product lines within the A&H range, combining them with fresh new ideas to give stunning results in a neat and easy to use package.
The padless DuoPreTM mic/line pre-amplifier is the new design first implemented on the ZED-14 and delivers a high-headroom, low-noise signal. The 4 band, 2 sweep EQ, along with the low noise summing amps, is borrowed from the acclaimed GL2400, while the bus architecture is a simplified, but equally comprehensive, version of that employed in the successful GL series.
The USB audio interface, with its uniquely flexible capability, allows different signals to be sent to USB, from LR or from selected aux buses. The USB return signal can be routed straight to the LR mix or to a stereo channel. The connectors are placed on the top surface for easy plugging & patching, and the construction, with individual circuit boards firmly nutted to the top panel, is as rock solid as Allen & Heath’s top of the range ML Series mixers.
Also included with ZED 4-Bus is the excellent SONAR LE digital audio workstation software for Windows, with audio and MIDI multi-track recording and mixing capability, effects plug-ins and editing features, enabling the ZED 4-Bus mixer to become a live recording or home recording mixer.
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. ZED-420 has a tuned 4-band EQ taken from the acclaimed GL2200 mixer, utilising MusiQ – with optimised slope (or Q factor) for equalising individual instruments.
Based on the proven pre-amps from the hugely successful PA series, ZED-420 has DuoPre pre-amps, which use a two stage design, with carefully controlled amounts of gain in each stage. When amplifying the signal from the XLR input, the gain range is huge - 69dB of range to be exact - and is very evenly distributed around the gain control, meaning better control of signal level. Most of the gain comes from the first stage, so unwanted noise is kept to a minimum.
Allen & Heath have included Cakewalk SONAR LE with ZED-420 so you can immediately start to use it to create your own music – just add a PC and it couldn’t be easier to get going. You’ll be able to record from your ZED mixer, create tracks and arrange songs, then play back to ZED via the USB port. You can use SONAR LE and your ZED mixer together in many ways – e.g. straightforward recording of a stereo mix, recording tracks individually to build up a song, or using the USB port and software as an effects loop.
Features
- 16 mono channels
- 2 dual stereo inputs with 4-band EQ
- Neutrik mic XLR
- Neutrik 1/4 inch jacks
- Channel insert
- Super wide gain ‘DuoPre’ mic line input
- 4-band EQ with 2 swept mids and in/out switch
- Illuminated mute
- Sound image pan
- Illuminated PFL & peak warning indicator
- ALPS 100mm faders
- 6 auxiliary sends (2 pre, 2 post, 2 pre/post)
- 4 sub groups fed from each channel
- All inputs with level control
- 12 bar meters
- L, R and M main mix outputs
- 2 matrix sections available; can send output to USB
- Individual channel 48V phantom power
- Direct output on every mono channel
- Configurable USB stereo audio in/out
- Cakewalk SONAR LE bundled with mixer