Introduction To Zed-14, 18 & 24; Mono And Stereo Channels - ALLEN & HEATH ZED 14 User Manual

INTRODUCTION TO THE ZED-14 & 24
The following is a technical overview of ZED, if you want to, please skip to the next section.
The Allen & Heath ZED series mixers have been carefully and lovingly designed in the beautiful county of Cornwall in the UK
and is manufactured alongside a wide range of professional audio mixing consoles. Many of the components used in ZED are
exactly the same as in the larger Allen & Heath products and the construction methods are also very similar — utilising individ-
ual vertically mounted channel circuit boards with each rotary control fixed with a metal nut to the front panel. This provides a
very robust product that will resist damage and give years of reliable use. It also makes servicing much easier should it be re-
quired, with the ability to remove one particular channel from the mixer at a time, or easily change a fader.
The audio circuitry is based on years of continual development and refinement , the performance of all the elements within the
mixer scrutinised and perfected to ensure the very best sound quality possible.
Multi-application:
ZED's are great for live mixing! Their layout makes them very easy to use and the 100mm faders give much better control of
the mix compared to most products at a similar price.
They are also great for recording, either a live show or an audio project at home can be built up track by track and studio
monitor speakers can be fed from the Alt Outputs.
ZED mixers are also ideal for teaching establishments, houses of worship, hotels and conference centres where their ease of
use and robust qualities make them a top choice.
Mic/Line Pre-amps:
Based on the pre-amps from the PA series, the ZED-14, 18 & 24 pre-amps 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. There is no "pad" switch, or pad circuit — line level signals are
simply plugged into the second stage of the pre-amp by using the line input jack socket. This has the great advantage of lower
noise when using the line input. (It is common to attenuate line level signals, the amplify them back up again which can give
more noise or hiss).
EQ:
The ZED series mixers are equipped with a 3-band equaliser circuit on each mono input and a 2-band EQ on the stereo chan-
nels. The frequency and response of each has been carefully chosen to give the maximum performance when using the EQ on a
variety of sources.
AUX system:
Four auxiliary buses are provided, two pre-fade and two post fader. Auxes 1 & 2 have master level controls. The auxes can be
sent to the USB output for either recording or effects purposes and Auxes 1 & 2 can be configured as a stereo pair, with sends
on the stereo channels switched either mono or stereo.

Mono and Stereo Channels:

One of the great things about the ZED series is the number and variety of things you can plug in. In addition to the mono
channels there are four stereo channels, each with a main stereo input on jack sockets, three of them have the ability to take
additional stereo inputs from phono sockets or from the USB audio input, flexibility gives you control.
USB:
Getting audio to and from a computer easily is now a common requirement for live sound and music production. The way we
have implemented this on ZED is super-flexible and super-easy! No longer do you need to fiddle around the back of your com-
puter 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! Quality audio to and from your PC or
MAC.
As you can tell, we're very proud of this product we hope you like it too.
Allen & Heath 10 ZED-14, 18 & 24 User Guide