Allen & Heath ZED-10FX

For my own gigs, I use this or any number of other A&H desks. I've always found the pres are nice and clean, and the EQ sensibly 'voiced' so that the band you grab instinctively is the one that you need. However, as a gigging musician doing my own sound at smaller venues, the quick load out and teardown quickly weeds out gear for another reason; durability. No other mini desks are built like this, with each pot bolted to the chassis, and there is a reassuring solidity to every connection. The rest of the gang in terms of competition feel worryingly fragile by comparison. Things I looked over were the lack of a 24bit audio interface - 16bit is a little outdated - and the lack of mute switching. This one is probably the one feature I miss most. Those also looking for bus flexibility will be left wanting. However, there are some feature that greatly add to the flexibility of this mixer; mainly the FET inputs, which do sound decent, and the option to use this as a sub-mixer by padding down the main outputs. Small mixers are always a compromise, but on balance, this sounds good, feels good, and has everything I need for a solo performance using a few channels. The onboard reverbs are decent, and the ability to change the FX send to AUX is a handy feature too often absent. If anyone is worried about pots instead of faders, of course there are other A&H models that cater for this, but if you think about it, pots stay where they are when this is put back in the gig bag, so I find it quite handy to retain the last-used mix settings. All-in-all, a great little mixer. Should it ever break, I know that the service from A&H will be top-notch.

Great little mixer from A&H. The build quality is as expected from Allen & Heath: sturdy and strong. Soundwise it's definitely better than I've heard in this pricerange, even the built-in FX are usable as they don't sound thin or muddy.

Could also easily be used as an on-stage mixer for bands who want to control levels of certain instruments on-stage before sending it to a pa mixer or monitor, you can use it in a studio setup (didn't try the usb output yet so dunno how well that works), or for really small live setups.

Of course there's mixers in this price range with inserts on all channels (although the zed-10fx has inserts on the main ouputs), more routing options etc but they just don't sound good. This mixer performs very well.

The only things that annoy me are the non-existent mute buttons and the RCA monitor outputs in stead of 1/4" although I think it's a logical choice considering its size and probable usage.

To be honest, I am yet to fully test this mixer, but what I have experienced so far is that this device is worth every euro/dollar. Why I wanted to write anything was the fact that I spent five hours trying to get the USB connection to work with my PC DAW.

As it is, this mixer has no driver of its own so I installed the latest version of ASIO4all, I believe it was 2.13. Apparently this was a mistake since I could not get the connection working no matter what I did.

Fortunately I tried an older version of the driver, 2.7 to be exact. It has a bit longer latency time, but the main thing is that it works perfect. So this is by no means a reason not to buy this mixer, since it is a beautiful piece of work. Just try older drivers if your DAW does not find the device via USB.

I purchased this mixer as I started to get more and more hardware for my home studio.

As usual with allen and heath the build quality is amazing. This is a really durable, well made piece of equipment.

I mainly use this mixer for recording a number of synths and drum machines i have in the studio and it works perfectly.

The onboard USB connects with no issues and my computer sees the Zed 10 as a soundcard however i am using this unit myself with a separate firewire audio interface myself.

The mixer is relatively easy to figure out how to use and has some nice onboard effects. i have had no issues with the unit since I purchased it.

The rotary pots feel good and are very accurate and i do not feel the need to have faders. The sound quality is decent and I find the unit fits my particular needs.

Overall this is a great unit for small home studios, small gigs and recording some practice sessions with a small PA. Good value for money in my opinion.

Here we have a well built mixer with beautiful preamps, in a surprisingly compact size and price. The Allen & Heath Zed-10fx give the performing musician almost every option one could wish for. From the swept mid frequency EQ which contribute when dealing with mic feedbacks, all the different and many send and return options, incredible option (and very useful and simple) for connecting the mixer to the computer - means that straight recordings of a session never been more easier, or using different effects from the PC into different channels. Of course the very high quality Effects which can easily controlled each by its different values. It is a very friendly product to work with, and in no time you will be able to plug and mix a small band for a live gig, or of course use it as a mixer for recording session. The materials used for building the mixer is fine enough to bring a solid, durable and well built mixer. And the sounds it produce are way beyond great. The guys at Allen & Heath apparently spent a long time crafting very well high quality preamps for this ZED series of mixers.
One thing I was missing a lot was the obvious Mute knob, which you'll find on most of the mixers, but even that can be pretty much covered by the "Listen" knob in most sessions.
Bottom line: a great mixer, with great sounds and lots of options and performance for it's price. Warmly recommended!