Allen & Heath ZED-18

ZED-18 features a responsive 3-band, swept mid frequency EQ design which utilises MusiQ – with optimised slope (or Q factor) for equalising individual instruments.
Based on the proven pre-amps from the hugely successful PA series, ZED-18 has DuoPre pre-amps, which use a two stage design, with carefully controlled amounts of gain in each stage. When amplifying the signal from the XLR input, the gain range is huge – 69dB of range to be exact – and is very evenly distributed around the gain control, meaning better control of signal level. Most of the gain comes from the first stage, so unwanted noise is kept to a minimum. Line level signals are simply plugged into the second stage of the pre-amp by using the line input jack socket, which has the great advantage of less noise when using the line input and also matching to a higher input impedance.