Allen & Heath Announces New CQ Series Digital Mixers Without Faders

Allen & Heath is one of the manufacturers with the largest number of digital mixer series and models, for all sizes and possibilities. Now, the British company announced its new CQ Series mixers, targeting simpler applications, where control is totally done on built-in touch screens or through a remote app for iPad. The CQ series includes the compact CQ-12T 12 inputs to 8 outputs digital mixer, the CQ-18T with 18/18 channels and built-in dual band Wi-Fi, and the CQ-20B 20in/8out digital mixer with Wi-Fi but no touch-screen, depending completely of the CQ MixPad remote app.

The professional mixer console market achieved global revenues of US$775 million in 2018 and is on track for annual sales of nearly US$1 billion by 2023, according to a comprehensive new report from Futuresource Consulting. The market research firm has been focusing on specific product categories in the professional audio industry, from microphones to professional headphones, which have not been fully characterized before on a global perspective. Audio mixers are an interesting category, since they are right at the core of the action.

Every day, musicians strive to bring people together through live performance. In helping artists and engineers achieve their ideal sound, Peavey Electronics endeavors to meet every need with the new UNITY DR16, the first entry in the UNITY Series of digital mixer products and the first of its kind to be fully expandable. Whether the user is running front of house or their own monitor mix, the rackmount UNITY DR16 is a highly adaptable and compatible solution that delivers professional-grade sound.

Audio mixing consoles, devices that blend together multiple sound sources, continue to experience a customer shift towards low-end products, cannibalizing the mid-range market. That’s one of the key takeaways from a new report released by Futuresource Consulting’s pro audio team. On the positive side, the overall segment continues to grow, thanks to the strong momentum experienced by professional audio digital mixing consoles in touring and rental, broadcast, and installed commercial applications.

We’ve recently seen a series of announcements from Mackie and PreSonus introducing digital stage box format mixers - basically replacing the physical control surfaces with iPads and wireless control. In a way, challenging the tremendous success of the very affordable but extremely powerful Behringer X32 digital console family. In response, Behringer now announced its own X Air Series stage box format mixers.