| Company type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronics |
| Founded | 1968 |
| Headquarters | Penryn, Cornwall, England |
| Products | Headphones Mixing consoles |
| Parent | Audiotonix |
| Website | www |
Allen & Heath (also known as AH or A&H) is a company based in Penryn, Cornwall, England, specialising in the manufacture of audio mixing consoles. Allen & Heath also makes sound management systems for industrial installations and DJ mixers for nightclubs. Allen & Heath is part of the Audiotonix Group.
Founded in 1968 by Andy Bereza and Stephen Batiste. [1] with subsequent involvement by, Ivor Taylor, and Andrew Stirling. [2]
In the early 1970s Allen & Heath built custom quadraphonic mixing consoles for the bands The Who, used in live performance and in the studio mixing of the album "Quadrophenia" and Pink Floyd, the MOD1, which was used by Alan Parsons to mix their live performances. The MOD1 can be seen in their movie "Live at Pompeii". [3]
Allen & Heath was acquired by Harman International in 1991. By 2001 the manufacturer's turnover had increased tenfold. [4]
In July 2001 there was a management buyout of the company with investment coming from 3i and Bank of Scotland. The board consisted of the four then-current directors, plus two non-executive directors from its investment partners. [4]
In March 2006 Close Growth Capital brought 3i's share for £9m in a secondary buyout. The company then employed 180 people with a turnover of £15 million. [5]
In April 2008, A&H was sold to D&M Holdings Inc. [6]
In June 2013, D&M Holdings sold Allen & Heath to private equity firm, Electra Partners. £43 million of equity and debt was provided by Electra Private Equity PLC and Allen & Heath's management.
The dLive series of consoles are designed for professional touring and broadcast uses. They are used by many engineers in the industry due to its high expandability and features. There are two classes of dLive: C class, and S Class. The C class being more compact. The dLive surface requires the use of the Allen & Heath's proprietary MixRack external rack-mounted mixer engine which also provides some input/output functionality. It also supports Allen and Heath's digital snake system, providing high-quality audio over Ethernet.
The Avantis is a console that sits between the dLive and SQ systems. With many of the facilities of the dLive it differs in the fact the surface itself contains the mix engine and thus does not require the use of the external MixRack. It supports the Allen and Heath digital snake system as per the dLive.
The SQ line is a step up from the previous (Qu) generation of mixers. It does not require an Allen & Heath MixRack due to the mixer engine being internal. It does support Allen and Heath digital snake system as the dLive.
The Qu series is a digital mixing system for recording and sound reinforcement. [7] It is designed to be a convenient and intuitive system for engineers already familiar with analog equipment, making the introduction to digital mixing relatively easy. It supports wireless control and monitoring via several apps for iOS and Android. [8] The consoles are also compatible with Allen & Heath's dSNAKE for digital audio over Ethernet.
A mixing console or mixing desk is an electronic device for mixing audio signals, used in sound recording and reproduction and sound reinforcement systems. Inputs to the console include microphones, signals from electric or electronic instruments, or recorded sounds. Mixers may control analog or digital signals. The modified signals are summed to produce the combined output signals, which can then be broadcast, amplified through a sound reinforcement system or recorded.
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed and released by Avid Technology for Microsoft Windows and macOS. It is used for music creation and production, sound for picture and, more generally, sound recording, editing, and mastering processes.
A stage box is an interface device used in sound reinforcement and recording studios to connect equipment to a mixing console. It provides a central location to connect microphones, instruments, and speakers to a multicore cable (snake), which allows the sound desk to be further from the stage and simplifies setup.
In the domain of digital audio, a control surface is a human interface device (HID) which allows the user to control a digital audio workstation or other digital audio application. Generally, a control surface will contain one or more controls that can be assigned to parameters in the software, allowing tactile control of the software. As digital audio software is complex and can play any number of functions in the audio chain, control surfaces can be used to control many aspects of music production, including virtual instruments, samplers, signal processors, mixers, DJ software, and music sequencers.
A sound reinforcement system is the combination of microphones, signal processors, amplifiers, and loudspeakers in enclosures all controlled by a mixing console that makes live or pre-recorded sounds louder and may also distribute those sounds to a larger or more distant audience. In many situations, a sound reinforcement system is also used to enhance or alter the sound of the sources on the stage, typically by using electronic effects, such as reverb, as opposed to simply amplifying the sources unaltered.
Solid State Logic (SSL) is a British company based in Begbroke, Oxfordshire, England that designs and markets audio mixing consoles, signal processors, and other audio technologies for the post-production, video production, broadcast, sound reinforcement and music recording industries. SSL employs over 160 people worldwide and has regional offices in Los Angeles, Milan, New York City, Paris, and Tokyo, with additional support provided by an international network of distributors. Solid State Logic is part of the Audiotonix Group.
Waves Audio Ltd. is an Israeli developer and supplier of professional digital audio signal processing technologies and audio effects, used in recording, mixing, mastering, post production, broadcast, and live sound. The company's corporate headquarters and main development facilities are located in Tel Aviv, with additional offices in the United States, China, and Taiwan, and development centers in India and Ukraine. In 2011, Waves won a Technical Grammy Award.
A variable-gain (VGA) or voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) is an electronic amplifier that varies its gain depending on a control voltage.
Midas is a company that designs professional audio consoles. Founded in London in 1970 by Jeff Byers and Charles Brooke, today the company is part of the Music Tribe group of brands.
In professional audio, a digital mixing console (DMC) is a type of mixing console used to combine, route, and change the dynamics, equalization and other properties of multiple audio input signals, using digital signal processing rather than analog circuitry. The digital audio samples, which is the internal representation of the analog inputs, are summed to what is known as a master channel to produce a combined output. A professional digital mixing console is a dedicated desk or control surface produced exclusively for the task and is typically more robust in terms of user control, processing power and quality of audio effects. However, a computer can also perform the same function since it can mimic its interface, input and output.
VENUE is a brand of live sound digital mixing consoles introduced by Digidesign in February 2005. The family now includes 5 different consoles and a number of ways they can be configured. They can all be connected to Pro Tools, the audio editing software also created by Avid/Digidesign, to provide recording and 'Virtual Soundcheck' facilities. One of the system's key marketing points is its use of the same AAX DSP/TDM plugins as Pro Tools, an industry standard digital audio workstation (DAW). This is designed to enable the sounds recorded by the artist in the studio to be easily recreated on stage, and to allow for greater flexibility in signal processing without heavy and mechanical-shock-sensitive racks of external processors. There is also a PC-based offline editor for creation and editing of show files, although there is no audio processing in the editor.
An audio signal is a representation of sound, typically using either a changing level of electrical voltage for analog signals, or a series of binary numbers for digital signals. Audio signals have frequencies in the audio frequency range of roughly 20 to 20,000 Hz, which corresponds to the lower and upper limits of human hearing. Audio signals may be synthesized directly, or may originate at a transducer such as a microphone, musical instrument pickup, phonograph cartridge, or tape head. Loudspeakers or headphones convert an electrical audio signal back into sound.
Yamaha Pro Audio, Inc. is a division of the Yamaha Corporation that offers a complete line of beginner professional audio products for the live sound and sound reinforcement markets. It has a long history of introducing significant products for the professional audio market such as the PM-1000 modular mixing console, the REV1 and SPX90 digital signal processors, the NS-10 studio monitors, and the 01v, 02R, 03D, PM1D, PM5D, QL5, M7CL, CL5, and PM10/7 Rivage digital mixing consoles.
A stage monitor system is a set of performer-facing loudspeakers called monitor speakers, stage monitors, floor monitors, wedges, or foldbacks on stage during live music performances in which a sound reinforcement system is used to amplify a performance for the audience. The monitor system allows musicians to hear themselves and fellow band members clearly.
Graham Blyth is an English audio engineer who is known for designing mixing consoles. He is a co-founder of Soundcraft, a manufacturer which Blyth helped form into a world leader in sound reinforcement and recording mixers, establishing the "British sound". After succeeding in electrical engineering he became a professional organist, performing on pipe organs around the world. Blyth is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and the Audio Engineering Society (AES). In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree in science from the University of Hertfordshire.
Dan Dugan is an American audio engineer, inventor, and nature sounds recordist. He was the first person in regional theatre to be called a sound designer, and he developed the first effective automatic microphone mixer: the automixer. Dugan's sound design work was acknowledged in 2003 with a Distinguished Career Award by the United States Institute for Theatre Technology, and in 2020 with an Emmy Award for technology relevant to remote working. In 2021 he was awarded Fellowship in the Audio Engineering Society.
Aviom is a pro audio equipment manufacturer of personal monitoring systems. Headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Aviom produces distributed audio networking gear which uses a proprietary digital audio transport system called A-Net, based on the physical layer of Ethernet and carried over Category 5 cables terminated with 8P8C connectors. Aviom's Pro16 Monitor Mixing System was nominated in 2005 for a TEC Award, and in 2008 the Pro64 Series won the best Sound System Technology at Musik Messe in Frankfurt, Germany.
SoundGrid is a networking and processing platform audio application made by Waves Audio and developed in cooperation with DiGiCo.
Audiotonix Group, Ltd. is a British multinational holding company established in 2014 and headquartered in Greater London, United Kingdom. Audiotonix companies design and manufacture mixing consoles and professional audio equipment for live events and broadcast sound.
AES50 is an Audio over Ethernet protocol for multichannel digital audio. It is defined in the AES50-2011 standard for High-resolution multi-channel audio interconnection (HRMAI).
