Allen & Heath has announced the arrival of two new products, the Xone:DB2 and the Xone:K2.
The Xone:DB2 is the next offering in Allen & Heath's DB range, following on from the flagship DB4, which was released earlier this year. It seems that the main difference between the pair is the manner in which users access on-board FX: the DB4 has a bank for each of its four channels with dedicated controls, whereas the DB2 has two banks which are reached via a menu system on the right of the mixer. The feature that has been brought over wholesale, however, is the DB4's "Trimodal EQ." The system can be configured to behave as a standard asymmetric EQ (+6/-25dB), total kill (+6dB/OFF with a 24dB/octave slope) or as a high-pass/low-pass filter system with adjustable resonance. A routing switch underneath sends the channel's signal to either the main mix or the FX sections and also assigns the crossfader.
As for the FX themselves, there are five in total—delay, reverb, modulation, resonator and damage. Both banks have a filter at their output, plus a knob for wet/dry level and expression. The OLED display above this panel indicates which FX are selected and the current BPM. Other features include a USB2 soundcard, full MIDI send data from all controls (aside from mic and phones) and a range of user-defined settings which includes meter mode, BPM range, USB audio routing scheme and display brightness.
And then of course there is the small matter of the price. The DB2 has been set at a suggested retail price of £1190 ex VAT (the DB4 goes for somewhere in the region of £1,860).
Next up is the Xone:K2. The unit is a MIDI controller and audio interface with a 4-channel internal soundcard. The K2 is linkable to other Xone gear via X:Link (which is included in the Xone:DB4 and DB2) and features 52 controls—12 analogue and six endless rotary encoders with push switch, four linear faders and 30 back lit performance switches. In total this means 171 MIDI control commands across the K2's three layers, which can be navigated via tri-colour LED illumination.
The Xone:DB2 will be available as of December 2011 at a suggested retail price of £1190 ex VAT. The Xone:K2 will be available as of January 2012 at a suggested retail price of £199 ex VAT.
