Allen and Heath Mixer roundup
Allen and Heath Mixer: A Complete Buyer's Guide
The most common mistake is buying on channel count alone. Here's how to actually choose the right Allen & Heath mixer for what you do.
Right, let's talk practically about buying an Allen & Heath mixer. The range is genuinely wide, and the mistake I see most often is people buying based on channel count alone rather than working backwards from what they actually need to run.
Start from your gig, not the spec sheet
Before you look at a single model number, be honest about what you're actually mixing: a duo doing pub gigs, a full band with monitors, a theatre show with cues, or a touring rig that travels every week. That answer narrows the range enormously before you've even opened a product page.
| What you're running | Sensible starting point |
|---|---|
| Podcast, home studio, small acoustic setup | ZED (analogue) |
| Band, rehearsal room, small venue with wireless control | CQ |
| Live sound with more I/O and physical control | Qu |
| Theatre, houses of worship, professional monitors | SQ |
| Larger productions needing dual-screen workflow | Avantis |
| Touring, broadcast, large installation | dLive |
Digital or analogue — decide this first
If your setup is small and genuinely stable, ZED's physical knobs and immediate signal path are hard to beat for simplicity — nothing to learn, nothing to recall. Once you need scene recall, remote control from a tablet, or built-in effects without extra hardware, you're into digital territory from CQ upward. Be honest about whether you'll actually use recall and remote control, or whether it'll just sit unused while you fumble through menus during a soundcheck.
Check the recording implementation, not just "yes it records"
Several models in the range — Qu, SQ and CQ — support multitrack recording straight to USB storage without a computer, which is genuinely handy for capturing a gig or a service. But "supports recording" covers a lot of ground: some implementations are stereo-only, some offer full multitrack, and channel counts and routing limits vary by specific model. If multitrack capture matters to your workflow, check the exact specification for the model you're considering rather than assuming it matches a different one in the range.
Don't over-buy on channel count and bus capacity
It's tempting to buy headroom "just in case," but a 128×64-channel dLive system is solving a genuinely different problem than a compact CQ-18T, and the extra capacity comes with extra complexity, cost and setup time you may never actually need. Work out your realistic maximum input count for the next few years, add a sensible margin, and buy for that — not for an imagined future arena tour.
Think about the ecosystem, not just the mixer
As you move up the range, Allen & Heath's ecosystem — AudioRacks, expanders, dSnake-compatible digital snakes, personal-monitoring tools — becomes genuinely relevant. If you're likely to expand a system over time, check what a given family actually supports before buying, since not every accessory is compatible across every generation and family.
New versus secondhand
The analogue ZED range is about as low-risk as secondhand purchases get — check pots and faders for scratchiness and you're most of the way there. Digital consoles are a different story: check firmware version, ask whether the unit has had any water or environmental exposure from touring life, and confirm any included expansion cards or licences transfer with the sale.
A quick pre-purchase checklist
- Define your realistic maximum channel count and use case first.
- Decide analogue versus digital based on whether you'll genuinely use recall and remote control.
- Check the exact recording implementation for your specific model, not the family in general.
- Consider ecosystem compatibility if you expect to expand later.
- On a used digital console, check firmware, environmental history and included licences.
Still working it out?
For the full picture of how the whole range fits together, see our complete guide to the Allen & Heath mixer range. If you're completely new to mixing consoles, our beginner's guide starts from first principles, and our pick of the best models for the money sorts recommendations by use case.
The bottom line
Any Allen & Heath mixer will reward buying for the gigs you actually do, not the ones you might do someday. A well-matched mixer at the right point in the range will serve you far better than an over-specified one you never fully learn to use.
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