We've built a lot of mixers in the last 30 years or so (over 150,000 at the last count) and we still get a huge buzz out of doing it well. It's an unbeatable feeling to know that at any time of day or night, right across the globe, there is an Allen & Heath mixer out there working hard, sounding great and making life a little easier for the guy at the controls.

Back in the early 70s we were hand-building consoles for elite bands like Pink Floyd and The Who. These days Allen & Heath customers are spread across almost every environment imaginable, including touring, theatres, churches, nightclubs, tv and radio stations, recording studios and countless other places where great sound matters.


Doing it for love

There are plenty of people making mixers, but we believe we've got a very special selling point: we're truly passionate about what we do. This isn't just something that gets reflected in glossy brochures like this, it's something you hear when you pick up the phone to us, and you hear it most of all every time you use an Allen & Heath mixer. Every console has its own distinct sound, and that sound tells you a lot about the people who created it. Listen to a bunch of engineers talking about Allen & Heath mixers and you'll probably hear words like 'warmth', 'depth' and 'fullness' used a lot. Those characteristics don't come about by accident - we tweak, tease, experiment and compare over many months to perfect each console we design, getting the very best from every component. This philosophy isn't confined to the preamps either, because every element of a console - from the input connectors right through to the earthing system - has an impact on the final sound. We only introduce a new product when we're convinced that it sounds fabulous.

We drive our own

They say you can tell how good a car company's products are by taking a look at what their own people drive. Strangely, most pro audio manufacturers can scarcely boast anyone who has the audio equivalent of a driver's license. We're different. Before a new mixer goes into production, you can be sure that one of our designers has used the prototypes for real. Carey Davies, who heads the design of our live mixers, has been mixing rock and theatre for over 20 years (and still does). Our leading DJ products designer, Andy Rigby-Jones, has nearly two decades of DJ residencies to his name. Both Carey and Andy, along with Rob and Jacko from our digital products team, have done audio system installations too. Our UK sales guy, Martin Daley, is a respected producer who regularly mixes successful CDs in his semi-pro studio. Needless to say, the rest of the company is packed with project recording fanatics, gigging musicians and DJs. All this, plus a lot of help from our many friends in the business, means that our designs are born in the field, not in the R&D lab. And it shows.

No gimmicks please, we're British

We don't make ordinary mixers. When we first start the design process for a new console (usually over a beer or five), we always ask ourselves, 'would this desk open up new possibilities for our customers?' If the answer's no, the idea never gets off the drawing board. Back in the early 80s we made a big contribution to the home studio revolution. Countless hit records were produced on old System 8s and Sabers by people who could never have dreamed of hiring out a top recording studio. Nowadays we're proud to be empowering more people by introducing high-end features such as VCA automation to customers on a real-world budget. An important point to stress here is that we will never design a mixer by throwing in the latest must-have killer feature and then cutting corners elsewhere to make sure it sells.