Best Option(s) for Fill Speakers-SQ

[AdamParticipant]

Hello, first time posting here and a bit of a newb when it comes to digital boards.

My church is looking to upgrade to an SQ Digital board. One thing I’m trying to figure out is the best way to set up our fill speakers. These need to have the exact same mix as the mains, but with a different EQ and a delay. My questions for this are:

1) if I use a matrix or post-fade aux for the fill, does either (matrix/aux) output allow me to put in an EQ and a delay?

2) Would it be easier to get an external DSP to handle the EQ and delay for these fill speakers instead of using a Matrix/Mix from the console?

3) We have inexperienced volunteers operate the console at times and I worry that if they get into stuff they shouldn’t they can change the mix going to these fill speakers. When using different profiles/accounts to login to the console can you limit what each account has access to so they can’t change the aux/matrix/mix settings?

[mfusaParticipant]

You can use a matrix. Send your MainLR as the source and will have the option to independently control a GEQ, PEQ, Compressor, and Delay for that Matrix. You can send MainLR as the source in either a pre (likely what you would want) or post fade setup.

Yes, you could use user permissions to control what people can get at. It’s fairly granular.

A couple of suggestions
1. Download and review the SQ Reference guide, it has instructions on how to do both of what you are asking
https://www.allen-heath.com/content/uploads/2023/05/SQ_ReferenceGuide_V1_5_0.pdf

2. Download the SQ Mixpad application for either your desktop computer or tablet device. You can run in “offline” mode and have access to a virtual mixer of sorts that you can play around with. You won’t get an exact replication of the experience of the local board but it’s better than nothing. https://www.allen-heath.com/hardware/sq/sq-7/resources/

3. When you get things the way you want it, save the show to an external USB and keep it in a safe but accessible location so that you can recall a known good show if you wanted. As far as I know, the SQ does not have the ability to store and recall shows locally, only USB. So, if you needed to recall a known good show you would need to have access to the USB thumb drive that has it on there.

[Phil DriscollParticipant]

Once you’ve got your fills sorted, you can remove the Matrix that’s connected to them from the control surface. It really prevent anyone messing with the level, but it makes it hard to do it by accident.

[mfusaParticipant]

That’s a good tip Phil, I didn’t think of that.

If you’re going to remove FFill from the control surface then I would think you’d want to configure the matrix as post fade and you’re ok with them moving up and down along with MainLR. In my church I use a matrix of LR for FFill but I did it prefade and adjust my fill level independently of LR. Sometimes, if I’ve got a lot of really hot mics on the front of the stage (speaker panels, etc) I will pull down FFill to minimize ring/feedback risk while still keeping LR up.

[BrianParticipant]

mfusa – Setting the matrix as a “post fader” send of the main LR will still allow you independent control of the fill speaker matrix. In other words, there is still a matrix fader that you can use to pull down the fill speaker volume relative to the main PA volume – like in your example. But setting it up post fader will allow the fill speakers to normally mirror the PA volume normally which is probably a more useful way of handling it.

Long story short, setting up the fill speakers post fader won’t take away your ability to pull them down when needed (really hot mics on the front of the stage for example) but does mean they will otherwise mirror any changes to the main l/r mix.

[AdamParticipant]

Thank you both for the replies. I figured this would be an easy question to answer. Thank you for the reference guide and using the Mixpad App is a great idea too.

I will probably end up putting it as a Post-Fade as that is how we currently have it setup with our Analog board.

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