The newest member of Allen & Heath's Avantis family is a portable powerhouse.
Allen & Heath are an established and highly respected brand in the world of professional audio, especially in the area of digital mixing consoles. The current A&H digital console line‑up comprises four main ranges, namely the Qu, SQ, Avantis and dLive series. The Avantis models sit second in the hierarchy, in terms of pricing and features, below the flagship dLive series and above the very popular SQ mixers that you’ll find almost everywhere, either installed in a live venue or as part of a portable on‑the‑road setup.
The original ‘full‑size’ Avantis offered a stepping stone for those aspiring to the full dLive experience but who didn’t have the budget for the dLive, and the most recent Avantis model, the Avantis Solo, packs all of the mixing performance of the larger version into a very compact format that is aimed at smaller venues and portable applications. Allen & Heath have not compromised on audio performance or flexibility, so the only differences between the Solo and the original Avantis are that the Solo has one (very large) touchscreen instead of two, 12 faders on the top surface rather than 24, and a smaller local I/O count on the rear of the console (see ‘Ins & Outs’ box).
The Avantis range uses exactly the same XCVI FPGA‑based mix engine that powers both the dLive and SQ mixers, running at the same 96kHz sample rate. The preamps are taken directly from the dLive S Class. The Solo, despite having limited rear‑panel I/O, has the same 64‑input, 42‑bus mixing capability as the dual‑screen Avantis, and provides six customisable fader layers for control over up to 72 channels/buses. Each layer of 12 faders is fully configurable to suit the task at hand, however your personal workflow requires it. There are 16 freely assignable DCA groups available, and the bus architecture is fully configurable.
Main Features
The Avantis Solo seems aimed mainly at owner‑operators, smaller and medium‑sized venues, and corporate AV users. The trademark Avantis features are all there, accessed via a touchscreen‑driven workflow, in a unit that’s small and light enough to be carried in the boot of a small car. Like the full‑size dual‑screen Avantis, the Solo features two 96kHz card slots that can be populated with any of the dLive digital I/O cards, adding up to 128 I/O per slot in Dante, MADI, Waves and gigaACE digital formats, among others. For venues that have already invested in Avantis hardware, show files can be directly loaded between the two models, so there are no compatibility or continuity issues. Likewise, the SLink Ethernet port is fully compatible with all of Allen & Heath’s digital stageboxes, as well as their ME personal monitor mixing system, making the Avantis Solo a drop‑in replacement for an existing A&H‑equipped venue.
The Avantis Solo is based around a 15.6‑inch colour touchscreen, and sports 12 motorised faders.
Especially interesting in a theatre or AV context is that the Avantis Solo can work seamlessly with RF mic systems from Shure and Sennheiser, including the ability to show battery life data and RF receiver levels right there in the channel strip. Other areas of wireless integration include display of RF channel ident, control of audio levels and muting.
The Avantis Solo supports A&H’s range of IP controllers — the IP1, IP6, and IP8 — via the Ethernet ports on the rear, allowing for artist‑controlled monitor mixes, say, or simply to add extra faders alongside the console.
Despite its smaller size (about half the footprint of the twin‑screen version), the Solo retains the full onboard processing power of the Avantis, and matches its very low latency figure of 0.7ms. It is equipped with 12 ‘RackExtra’ effects slots for reverb, delay and the like, features an Automatic Mic Mixing (AMM) mode, and can be upgraded with the dPack expansion ($1599), which adds a number of additional processors including analogue emulations, specialised dynamics processors, studio‑style effects, a valve preamp emulation and more. These can replace the ‘default’ processing modules in a channel, or be loaded up into one of the RackExtra slots.
The mixer can be remotely controlled in a number of different ways: via the Avantis Director software, the Avantis MixPad app for iPad, or the OneMix personal monitor mixing app for iOS. See ‘Remote Control’ box for more info.
First Impressions
The Avantis Solo arrived in a rather large box, too big to pick up and carry by myself, so I opened it up straight away to extract the mixer; it was suspended in large sections of shaped packing foam, and the unit itself was easy to handle once freed from the shipping materials. The console measures only 546 x 627 x 269mm (WDH) and weighs 17.5kg, so it’s definitely what you’d call portable. The Solo has a substantial look and feel to it, and it’s equipped with lifting bars that are positioned low down on the sides. There are smaller but similar‑looking bars on either side nearer the top surface, but don’t try and pick it up using these, as they are not handles but mounts for attaching peripherals such as an iPad (there’s a neat accessory available from A&H designed for exactly this purpose).
Boot‑up time was around 40 seconds (to be expected as there’s a lot of processing going on inside), and the Solo runs very quietly. I began by downloading and installing the latest firmware, and this process was extremely straightforward — Allen & Heath have made everything to do with software as automatic as possible, and the mixer recognised the new firmware version and installed it without any fuss.
The large touchscreen is very easy on the eye and fingertips and is really at the heart of almost everything that happens within the machine.
Of course, the main attraction is the large touchscreen that’s used to control and inform you about every aspect of the mixing and processing functions. It’s bigger than my first telly and a couple of diagonal inches bigger than my current laptop. It’s also sharp as a new pin, and the capacitive touch response makes it a joy to use. Sitting in front of the Avantis Solo definitely brings that ‘pro league’ mixer feel, and with the flexible approach to just about every aspect of the mix architecture, it’s much closer to the dLive than the SQ in terms of what you can see and do.
There are six fader banks available, giving control over up to 72 channels/buses using the 12 faders. On the far side of the console are 12 completely assignable soft buttons.
The mechanical side of things is very nicely designed and made, with super‑smooth (and fast) motorised faders, and every button and rotary control has a quality feel. The press‑buttons are all of the illuminated rubbery type, which I personally like as they have a positive action. Some are on the small side, but they all have clear legends printed on them. The rotary knobs, on the other hand, are quite chunky and have a sort of ‘matte smooth’ finish with decent‑sized grip mouldings — I much prefer these to either the shiny chrome‑effect knobs or, worse still, those with a horrible rubberised coating that retains much of whatever the previous user had for lunch. The knobs are all plain black, with integrated LED indicators for the ones below the screen, and fit in well with the overall black surface theme. One point about everything being configurable is, of course, that knobs and buttons can have several different functions, and so can’t be permanently labelled. Because the touchscreen takes up a fair amount of width, the 12 faders are well spaced, and there’s plenty of finger room around them and all the other surface controls.
As already mentioned, the large touchscreen is very easy on the eye and fingertips, and is really at the heart of almost everything that happens within the machine. There are usually at least two ways of achieving the same control function, and users will be able to set up the Solo according to how they need to use it — moving up from a ‘fixed architecture’ desk to a fully flexible ‘put it all just where you want it’ system opens up so many possibilities for developing and streamlining the mixing workflow.
Worthy of mention here, and typical of the ergonomic design detail, is the surface illumination built into the Avantis Solo. We all know that all live gigs have to take place either in complete darkness or blazing direct sunlight, and the touchscreen has plenty of brightness to help with the latter, while its sheer size means that on‑screen characters and symbols are large enough to see easily. For mixing in darkened rooms, there’s a neat LED strip that shines upward from underneath the lower handrest bar and illuminates the fader area quite nicely. You can alter the light balance from deepish blue to almost white, and although it does show up bits of detritus, I much prefer it to the top‑mounted light strip on my own SQ7, which I find a bit distracting as it points directly towards me when I’m sitting at the desk.
Show Time
To get some hands‑on time with the Avantis Solo, I took it along to a couple of band rehearsals. My colleague Patrick Woodington (a long‑time A&H user) also used it for a musical production along with one of my AR24 stageboxes, and so managed to get in some quality familiarisation time too.
We both had very positive experiences of the Solo, and although I didn’t explore all of its extensive feature set, I really liked using it and found it easy to configure and quick to get around the basics. The large, bright touchscreen is simply first‑class, and makes going back to my SQ7 seem like I need new glasses! Everything seems to have been very well thought through, and implemented in a clear and logical way.
The Avantis Solo has a very compact footprint for such a powerful piece of kit, and the build quality is excellent.
The Avantis Solo has a very compact footprint for such a powerful piece of kit, and the build quality is excellent. The whole thing appears to have been both well‑designed and very well put together — an impression that’s reinforced by the use of Neutrik XLR and Ethercon connectors throughout. The desk is light enough to be portable but reassuringly solid and stable at the same time (cables aren’t going to drag this across a table!), and the handles underneath are well placed.
A number of thoughtful design elements stood out for me, such as the fact that there are USB‑A ports (for stereo recording/playback, saving show files and updating firmware) on both the front and rear panels, so you can use whichever is most convenient. Similarly, the headphone output is duplicated on both ‘full‑size’ 6.5mm jack and a 3.5mm mini‑jack (how many times have you lost a mini‑jack adaptor?).
In terms of operation, the UI is easy to navigate and should be easy for guest engineers to pick up. As on any mixing desk, the layout takes a bit of getting used to, but there are lots of user‑assignable keys over to the right of the faders so you can customise the workflow to suit your needs. There’s not a huge amount of encoders to work with, but the touchscreen easily makes up for this. Likewise, there’s no dedicated metering on the console’s surface, but the channel overview at bottom of the display shows levels in detail, so it wasn’t something I missed.
It can feel like there is a lack of fader banks — there are only six, and these will soon fill up once you’ve got additional layers for effects sends/returns and bus masters alongside the inputs. That said, the DCAs can help you manage multiple channels/buses, and assigning them is a breeze. You can also lock a channel in place so that it stays put regardless of what layer you’re on, which is very useful indeed!
One slight niggle is that the console has to be rebooted every time you change network settings, and with a 40‑second boot‑up time, that could become annoying (though it’s not something you’re likely to have to do often). Still, a dedicated reboot option would have been useful, instead of having to shut down and then manually power it up again.
Another feature that some users might miss is unbalanced RCA inputs for local line‑level devices, which could potentially have been very useful for AV work.
In terms of processing, the Free Pack that you receive on registering the console includes three different graphic EQs and the Tube Stage Preamp module, and these all work very well. However, the Avantis dPack represents a significant upgrade, and includes a very nice 12‑band parametric EQ as an alternative to the graphic EQs on the mix outputs. The other plug‑ins in the bundle are all low‑latency, easy to use and sound really nice.
Avant Garde
The Avantis Solo currently lists around £7500 (as of March 2025, at least two major retailers are around this price). This is significantly lower than you’d pay to get into dLive territory, and as the Avantis seems to be much closer to the dLive than the SQ in terms of its flexibility and features, this doesn’t seem like a hefty price for something that’s going to be pretty rider‑friendly and offer a high degree of control with 64 inputs, 72 control channels and 42 fully configurable and assignable buses. For most applications a remote input expander of some sort will be necessary, so unless you already have an Allen & Heath system that includes one or more of these, this will have to be taken into account when budgeting.
All this considered, the Avantis Solo is an impressive little mixer, offering top‑quality performance with a high‑end feature set. The Avantis Solo benefits from established, advanced Allen & Heath processing and an excellent touchscreen‑led user interface, while its flexibility and expandability make it a serious contender for any application where true professional capability in a compact package is required.
As always, though, there’s no substitute for trying something out yourself, so if you’re considering a purchase you should definitely dive into the Allen & Heath website and read through the extensive information available — and then try to arrange a hands‑on demo through your favourite dealer.
Ins & Outs
Local analogue connectivity is limited to six XLR inputs and outputs. A further pair of XLRs offers AES3 digital connectivity, the SLink Ethercon port allows connection to Allen & Heath’s range of digital stageboxes, and the two I/O Port slots can accommodate a range of digital expansion cards.
Round the back, the Solo has just six analogue inputs and outputs, all on XLR connectors (the full‑size Avantis doubles that to 12 analogue ins and outs). There’s also a seventh XLR in line with the others, but this is a digital AES3 port; just something to bear in mind when groping round the back to plug a talkback mic in, or quickly hook up a last‑minute feed for the video guy...
The limited number of local inputs means that, in the majority of applications, the Avantis Solo will need to be hooked up to at least one remote stagebox via the SLink Ethercon port. Whilst this effectively bumps up the starting price of an Avantis setup, the good news is that in an upgrade scenario it will work with any of the range of extenders used with existing A&H mixers, so it could be a simple plug‑and‑play upgrade to an existing theatre installation. Integration and operation with any supported remote units is automatic and seamless as far as the user is concerned (as with the SQ), and you don’t have to worry about firmware version compatibility either up or down.
The local I/O on the rear can still be very useful for things like talkback, local walk‑in, sound effects and so on, and it does mean that the Solo can be used completely standalone if all you need is portable AV in a campus or corporate setting. The important point is that the Solo is completely flexible, anything can be patched to anywhere, and it will handle the full complement of 64 inputs and 42 buses however you set it up.
Remote Control
The two network ports on the Avantis Solo’s rear panel allow it to be connected to a computer network, which in turn means you can control the desk from any computer (Mac or PC) on the network running Allen & Heath’s Avantis Director software. This mirrors the screen on the desk and allows complete control over the console. It can also be used offline — great for preparing for a show, as a basis for tutorials, or for simply learning to use the desk.
With a wireless router or access point on the network, the Avantis can also be controlled over WiFi from a tablet running the Avantis MixPad app. This, again, allows for complete mixing control, as well as portability, so the engineer can control the console from anywhere in the venue. You can control the desk locally and remotely at the same time, and multiple iPads can be connected to the desk simultaneously.
Two further apps are designed for controlling monitor mixes. Avantis 4You is a personal monitor mixing app, intended for use by performers, and runs on iOS and Android devices. It can be configured to allow full control over an aux mix, including EQ and compression, or it can present a simple four‑fader UI to keep things simple. Avantis OneMix, meanwhile, offers all the functionality of the MixPad app, but is locked to a single aux output to prevent any changes to the main mix.
Finally, Allen & Heath’s IP range of hardware controllers includes simple wall‑mounting button and encoder panels, designed for installations, as well as the IP6 rotary controller and IP8 fader controller, which both sport assignable soft keys and can be powered over Ethernet. These can be used to expand on the console surface’s controls, or set up remotely to control different mixes or venue zones.
Pros
- Powerful, high‑end mixing in a portable unit.
- Excellent touchscreen‑led workflow with a useful amount of physical controls.
- Extensive DSP capabilities.
- Highly expandable with optional cards.
- Strong, all‑metal casing should withstand road rigours.
Cons
- Limited local I/O mean a remote stagebox will be required in most scenarios.
- Relatively high price point, but reflects its high‑end capability.
Summary
This compact console builds on the existing Avantis tech, and offers all the same processing power and digital connectivity, while taking up considerably less space!
Information
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