Allen & Heath ZED-R16 Will Make Your Home Studio Much More Enviable

June 09, 2008
Allen & Heath ZED-R16 Released

Allen & Heath says it's been over a decade since they've released a new dedicated recording mixer within their ZED line of mixing interfaces. The ZED-R16 ditches USB with 18 Firewire ins and outs. While Allen & Heath calls the ZED-R16 a "true recording mixer," they also offer a gentle reminder that it can be used as a live front-of-house mixer as well.

The ZED-R16 boasts powerful preamps and quality Firewire A/D conversion. It also features extensive EQ options and a nice analog channel strip. Furthermore, output options allow for both control room speaker and alternate speaker setups plus two more artist monitor feeds so that your drummer can have whatever wacky mix of clicks and instruments he needs that particular take. A built-in talkback microphone also allows the engineer, mixer or producer to remind the musicians to tune before the take, stop noodling around before recording, etc.

Other built-in features credited towards Allen & Heath engineers who have home studios themselves include dual function audio / MIDI faders and sequencer transport.

The internal soundcard features the aforementioned 18 Firewire I/O plus 16 ADAT I/O. Each mixer channel has an independent soundcard channel so that you can record all of your audio simultaneously and separately into your DAW. In a live setting, the ZED-R16 takes a page from Optimus Prime's book by transofrming its four aux busses into foldback feeds and FX sends.

Fast features:

  • Low noise, two stage preamp design
  • Sophisticated EQ with two swept, fully parametric mids and high and low shelving EQ
  • Two pre and post aux busses
  • 18 Firewire I/O and 16 ADAT I/O
  • MIDI software control -- even channel faders can be switched to become MIDI controllers
  • Control room monitor and alternate monitor outs
  • Built like a tank using individually mounted circuit boards and professional 100 mm faders
  • Includes Cakewalk SONAR LE

J. Irving-Giles is a writer / editor for Gearwire


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Do you know if you will be

By: Nico

Do you know if you will be able to mix each audio track back from the computer on each channel?

Wed, 2008-06-11 07:24

From Allen & Heath:

By: oomalley
"The ZED-R16 can be employed as a standard analogue mixer while recording multi-track via FireWire or ADAT, a traditional inline mixer recording with send and return per channel via FireWire, or as a MIDI controller via switchable channel faders."

Looks like the answer is yes.
Thu, 2008-06-12 13:31

Cost?

By: Oli

Any idea of RRP?

Fri, 2008-06-13 14:24

As of yet...

By: oomalley

I haven't seen it posted on A&H's site.

Fri, 2008-06-13 18:54

Retail price is about 1800

By: Mike

Retail price is about 1800 pounds.

Mon, 2008-07-28 11:23

When can I purchase one?

By: Joel gonzalez

When will the ZED-R-16 be available to purchase?

Wed, 2008-07-30 15:29

Zed R 16

By: Michael Palmer

YEs, you will are able to send and receive 16 channels of digital audio with up to 24/96kHz sample rate.

In addition the audio can be send pre/post the full-parametric analog british eq, Audio can also be returned pre/post eq, pre/post analog inserts and the faders are custom designed with MIDI data encoders on them so you can use the unit as a complete surface controller.

On the master section there is a complete set of 12 rotary data encoders, 8 soft keys a full MMC transport controller and 4 dedicated midi faders.

The unit sounds amazing!, it utilizes a new differential drive mic preamp section patterned after the GL3800 mic pres.

Should be available around 1st SEPT in the US.

MAP price is $2999

Wed, 2008-08-06 10:48

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