GLD Series - Allen & Heath Digital Mixer

Ready to tick all the boxes? Allen & Heath has been working hard at this one for a while, we're guessing. And possibly the name says it all - their much-loved analogue GL Series has kept A&H up the top of the tree for so long in live venues, and with mobile production companies, and now (thanks to plenty of innovation inherited from the iLive series) we've got a Digital soloution at an analogue price.

We haven't played with one yet, seeing as GLD was only announced today, but since Allen & Heath has always delivered in spades, since back when all of us at Factory Sound were still wearing shorts, let's borrow a bit of blurb from their pen: "As you would expect from Allen & Heath, GLD delivers outstanding audio performance, with a new high-end mic preamp, low latency and the DSP muscle to provide full processing without compromise. GLD-80's FX engines are taken directly from the iLive system and feature beautifully crafted emulations of industry classics."

But how does it all work? First of all there's the tactile heart of the system - the GLD-80 digital mixer. Via XLR, you get 4 in and 4 out (plus other I/O), so to fully get the system happening, you'll need to add either a GLD-AR2412 (main audio rack, 3RU, 24 XLR in, 12 XLR out), up to two GLD-AR0804 (expander audio rack, 1RU, 8 XLR in, 4 XLR out) - or any combination of all three, for a total XLR I/O count of 48/24.

As a nice little addition, there's even an 'Aviom' port on the GLD-2412, just to help out if you've already sorted your stage monitoring rig. And of course, we're really just scratching the surface here. GLD has the ability to record and playback a stereo signal on a USB memory stick. Standard iLive audio I/O option cards for Dante, MADI, EtherSound and Allen & Heath's ACE protocols can be fitted, allowing multi-channel record/playback, FOH/monitor splits, and connection to A&H iLive systems, which can easily be configured using GLD's extensive soft-patching.

We're seriously looking forward to getting stock, so make sure you keep an eye out - watch this GLD space. Thanks to Allen & Heath, it looks like a very happy new year in 2012.