gain control of double patched channels

[hteventsParticipant]

Hello all,

We are planning on bying an SQ5 and wish to double patch most of the channels so we can have seperate channel processing for the monitoring.

For example: Channel 1 (on input 1 of the stage box), the kick channel, is also patched to channel 22 (kick for monitor).

I have gain control for the preamp on channel 1, but does channel 22 also have gain control for the preamps? If yes, is there a way to prevent gain control for all duplicated channels, so those channels only have trim control?
I want an iPad running MixPad for the monitors, but it needs to have full control over the mixer (for various reasons). The personal devices running SQ4You will be restricted, but I don’t want to restrict the iPad, unless it is the only way

Thanks in advance.

[AdethefadeParticipant]

Hi There. If you patch on the I/O page you’ll have completely separate channels with their own input gains.

[mfusaParticipant]

While each channel should show 48V, PAD, Gain they should be identical and mirrored on any input which is using the same physical source. So, if two channels (say KickHigh, KickLow) are using the same physical input connection (say Slink Channel 1) then it should only be electrically possible to have one phantom power setting, pad, and gain shared amongst all the channels using that physical input. I would expect that, if you go to KickHigh and set the gain to 23 and 48V to ON, then go to KickLow (using the same physical input) should show the exact same settings. Any changes made to one should show on the other.

However, other than that you should get completely independent control on the channel. You are free to have different trim levels, HPF, EQ, Comp, etc on each channel despite them using the same physical input.

I took a scan through the SQ reference guide and I didn’t see this aspect covered (how physical preamp settings are managed when patched to multiple channels) but I could have missed it. Any other behavior, to me, would be theoretically impossible unless you are using an XLR splitter on the front end and physically patching them to separate inputs.

[KeithJ A&HModerator]

@htevents

There is one preamp per XLR input socket. This is a digitally controlled analogue preamp stage which brings up the signal before Analogue to Digital Conversion (ADC) takes place.
(note that there is one 48V phantom power switch and Pad per socket too)
So you will not get separate preamp gain control when double patching mic input sockets to multiple input channels, because there is only one preamp per socket that can be controlled.
Instead, if double patching the same input socket to multiple input channels, you will see the same preamp values (gain/48V/PAD) on all.

However, you do get a per-channel trim control, which is part of the digital processing and belongs to the channel rather than the socket.
So it is possible to adjust this independently on every input channel, and when using the surface, you can choose for the dedicated preamp gain control to only adjust thim (and not the preamp gain).

Thanks,
Keith.

[hteventsParticipant]

Hmm, seems that I have miss formulated my question.

I do know I only have 1 gain control per preamp. What I want to know is if I can disable gain control for the duplicated channels. I don’t want the duplicated channels to have control over the preamp gain (or any other settings of the preamp like pad, 48v, etc.), I only want the duplicated channel to have trim control.

What I want to do is have all my FOH processing channels on Layer C. All the monitor processing channels (the duplicated ones) I want to put on layer A. When someone working on the iPad is changing the processing for a monitor processing channel on layer A, for example the duplicated kick input, I don’t want that person to have control of the preamp gains on the monitor channels, only trim control, but I can’t restrict all gain control for the iPad user with permissions, because I also want to be able to grab that iPad and make (quick) changes for the FOH channels, when walking around the venue, so I need gain control on the same iPad and user.

Do I make sense in any way or is this just not possible?

[mfusaParticipant]

AFAIK you cannot restrict gain control on a channel by channel basis for all users. However, you could set up your monitor engineer to log into MixPad on the iPad as a user who is not allowed to change preamp settings (see user permissions page 91-94 in the SQ reference guide). If you needed to adjust preamp settings, from the same iPad, you would need to sign out and sign in as a user who does have permission.

In my experience, the SQ is less granular on many things (like scene safe parameters) so it’s possible that higher end boards in the AH line have some more granular permission abilities to where you could do what you wanted but it would seem like logging out/logging in or just buying an extra iPad for your use might be an acceptable workaround versus the cost of a higher end board (if even possible).

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