Allen & Heath
Encyclopedia
Allen & Heath is a company based in Penryn, Cornwall
Penryn, Cornwall
Penryn is a civil parish and town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It is situated on the Penryn River about one mile northwest of Falmouth...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, specialising in the manufacture of audio mixing console
Mixing console
In professional audio, a mixing console, or audio mixer, also called a sound board, mixing desk, or mixer is an electronic device for combining , routing, and changing the level, timbre and/or dynamics of audio signals. A mixer can mix analog or digital signals, depending on the type of mixer...

s. Allen & Heath also makes sound management systems for industrial installations and DJ mixer
DJ mixer
A DJ mixer is a type of audio mixing console used by disc jockeys.The key features that differentiate a DJ mixer from other types of audio mixers are the ability to redirect a non-playing source to headphones and the presence of a crossfader, which allows for an easier transition between two sources...

s for nightclubs.
Allen & Heath is now part of D&M Holdings
D&M Holdings
D&M Holdings is a Japanese corporation that owns several audio and video brands. It was formed in 2002 from the merger of Denon and Marantz. It has acquired several other companies since that time. In 2008 it was acquired by K. K. BCJ-2, a Tokyo corporation owned by investment funds advised...

.

History

Founded in 1969, the company became more widely know after involvement by Andy Bereza
Andy Bereza
Andy Bereza was born at Penley Hospital, Wales in 1949 where his father was the head doctor. He has a younger brother and sister Stanley and Marysia.- Career :...

, Ivor Taylor, and Andrew Stirling.

In the early 1970s Allen & Heath built a custom quadraphonic mixing console for the band Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd were an English rock band that achieved worldwide success with their progressive and psychedelic rock music. Their work is marked by the use of philosophical lyrics, sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Pink Floyd are one of the most commercially...

, the MOD1, which was used by Alan Parsons
Alan Parsons
Alan Parsons is a British audio engineer, musician, and record producer. He was involved with the production of several significant albums, including The Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be, as well as Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon for which Pink Floyd credit him as an important contributor...

 to mix their live performances. The MOD1 can be seen in their movie "Live at Pompeii
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii
Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is a 1972 film featuring Pink Floyd performing six songs in the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy. It was directed by Adrian Maben and recorded in the month of October using studio-quality 24-track recorders without a live audience.The performances of...

".

Allen & Heath was the first manufacture to mount pots and switches on the input channel circuit board. These were the first modular mixers where sub-systems could be replaced as a unit. Allen & Heath was the first company to make a small mixer, a 6 channel, 2 output transistorized mixer called the MiniMixer. The Allen & Heath Syncron A mixer was the first to use op-amps. The Allen & Heath CMC console was the first console to use a microprocessor to integrate MIDI capabilities with a mixer. The GL2 console combined Front of House
Front of House
Front of house is primarily a theatrical term, referring to the portion of the building that is open to the public. In theatre and live music venues, it typically refers to the auditorium and foyer, as opposed to the stage and backstage areas...

 (FOH) and stage monitor functionality into a single mixer, what is called a "dual function" mixer.

Products

Allen & Heath's analog pro audio mixer product line starts from a compact 12 channel size up to well-equipped 48-channel frames for professional concert use. The larger VCA
Variable-gain amplifier
A variable-gain or voltage-controlled amplifier is an electronic amplifier that varies its gain depending on a control voltage .VCAs have many applications, including audio level compression, synthesizers and amplitude modulation....

 based ML series mixers have the option to expand the mixer using a sidecar system. Therefore it is possible, with two 24-input sidecars and a 48-channel mixer (either the ML5000 or the ML4000) to produce a 96-channel mixer with various configurations of stereo channels.

Allen & Heath also manufacture the iLive digital mixer series which has met with favorable reviews in the live sound industry. The iLive systems are based around a control surface and a separate mix engine which has multiple CAT5 cable outputs each of which offers high speed digital data transfer. This allows just one cable to be run from the rack on stage to the FOH iLive, rather than a multicore, and one cable to the iLive controlling monitor mixes. The iLive is useful both as a FOH
Front of House
Front of house is primarily a theatrical term, referring to the portion of the building that is open to the public. In theatre and live music venues, it typically refers to the auditorium and foyer, as opposed to the stage and backstage areas...

 and a monitor desk as it has very high quality built in effects and up to 30 aux outputs.

Aimed at the DJ market, A&H's Xone line of mixers is held in high esteem by the DJ community due to the emphasis on high quality audio and build quality. The Xone 92 is, arguably, Allen & Heath's most recognisable DJ mixer; it is embraced by Richie Hawtin
Richie Hawtin
Richard Hawtin is an English-Canadian electronic musician and DJ who was an influential part of Detroit techno's second wave of artists in the early 1990s and a leading exponent of Minimal techno since the mid 1990s...

and other renowned DJs.

One of the Xone mixer's main attributes is the high quality analog VCF filters that enable a DJ to bring in just the low frequency or high frequency portion of a new sound source.

The ZED series has also recently been released; representing comparatively high value as both live and studio desks due to features such as stereo USB returns and two-part mic preamplifiers. The ZED series sits between the MixWizard and the GL series in the Allen & Heath product range.

The ZED-R16 mixer is essentially a 16 channel mixer with an internal 18 channel sound card (in and out) connected via FireWire to the host computer. It can function as a stand-alone analog mixer, a combined analog/digital or as an analog plug-in to a computer based mixer. The console also features MIDI on the faders and some extra MIDI controls on a Surface. The console is able to be daisy-chained with another ZED-R16 to give 32 recording channels. It features many options for studio signal routing and alternative speakers.
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