Taken from Mix Magazine’s April 2025 issue, Steve La Cerra’s deep dive into the Allen & Heath Avantis Solo console is the longest product review in Mix history! Since it runs nearly 5,000 words, it is broken up into multiple parts to make it more manageable to read online.
When Allen & Heath introduced the Avantis console a few years back, it was the third mixer to employ the company’s XCVI Field Programmable Gate Array engine. FPGAs are typically used for applications requiring a lot of horsepower (supercomputers, for example), and replacing traditional DSP chips with FPGA technology was a feat that required A&H engineers to do some serious low-level coding—as opposed to adopting or modifying code for DSP chips that are already designed for audio processing.
The payoffs include markedly increased performance and reduced latency (0.7 mS), even when running at high sample rates. The XCVI employed in the Avantis and Avantis Solo supports 96 kHz operation while providing 64 input channels, 42 configurable buses, 12 RackExtra FX slots with dedicated stereo returns, dPack plug-in processing, dual 128×128 card slots, 16 DCAs and access to the A&H ecosystem of rack I/Os.
Read the full review at Mix Magazine
