Here’s a video of the new Audient Zen from Musikmesse in Frankfurt. I felt it, I touched it, I rubbed it. I tormented the Audient booth as soon as I had a boring moment. But I didn’t hear the Zen, so my thoughts are purely superficial.
The Zen is – at least when it comes to build quality – the real deal. Make no mistake about it. The faders and the buttons feels top notch. Beneath the faders, where you rest your feet, is also very nice. It’s made of wood, and have no plastic qualities to it at all. I happen to thing this is an important aspect to a mixer or a control surface and have often complained about other control surfaces and mixers feel plastic and poorly built around just this area (*cough*Digidesign*cough*). My only complaint about the build quality is the pots. They aren’t bad, and definitely not sub-par other mixers in this price-range. I complained about this to Audient, but I guess the reason is fairly obvious: with all those knobs there it’s very much a matter of price.
You’ll be able to get your Zen in many variations. The desk shown in the video is the first one, but a 32 channel version is also planned. I’ll leave the details to the specs.
I must however mention the compressor. I think it’s an excellent addition. Sure, slightly odd that there’s a compressor over EQ’s, but still an excellent addition. By default it’s connected to the main outs, but you will be able to route it to the other busses. Audient definitely thought of parallel compression and mixbus glue when they added this one, so hopefully it can go from gluey-gooey to squashy-squarky. And yes, “squarky” is indeed a word (look it up!), and no, it doesn’t have shit to do with compression.
From Audient:
Key features of the mixing console include: 16 or 32 inputs, 2 inputs per channel, DAW record output on each channel, 2 stereo buses, 2 mono buses, 4 auxiliaries/2 cue sends, insert on each channel, stereo bus compressor, stereo digital out option, moving fader automation and DAW transport control.
A preamp version might show up. A patchbay for it is not planned, but if enough people request it Audient might naturally reconsider.
More about the Zen on Audients website.
really like the site. very informative and very professional