QU 16 – Opinions after 14 months – Wish List

[OK1]

1. I am not pleased with the compressor. Of course one can put this down to user error and user settings, i.e maybe its just me, but I sincerely doubt it. I can audibly hear what I think is digital distortion from the compressor. I set all compressors to respond to Peak, not RMS. This is one area where I consider that for any critical mixing the advantages of a 96Khz sampling rate become desirable.

My opinion – no facts to back this up is that the compressor is not oversampled, so its result is what I call “crunchy”.

I would have preferred to also be able to reduce the release down to as low as 20 milliseconds, but that is not possible. 100 millisecond release on a compressor is a rather safe setting.

What really brought this home to me, the more, was after I had implemented the monitoring for our choir on Mix Output 1, and was listening via headphones. My Mix 1 receives audio from the channels, set to pre-fader, and pre-compressor, it just sounded so much more alive than the main L/R output which obviously has to pass through the compressor on each channel.

Over time, I am thinking that I’ll dial down some of the compression at channel level and lean more on the compressor of the summed outputs on the L/R, to give the audio more room to breathe.

Definitely, the next time I have the liberty of specifying any digital mixer, it will have to be 96K, so that I’m sure I have at least 2x oversampling at the compressors.

2. No limiters, it would have been so lovely to be able to have both a compressor as well as a limiter, on the outputs. Compressor to do most of the heavy lifting, and a limiter to catch spurious peaks, rather than have a single compressor aim to achieve both. So I have to compromise in my compressor settings on the outputs, setting them too aggressive for compression and too tame for proper limiting.

3. The RTA display has the heights of each bar, rather short, so it’s a bit useless as a frequency response analyser. Not detailed enough, but it does show me that clearly there is a general dip in my outputs in the 1Khz to 2Khz region, and that’s not because I have mixed that region out in the channels, or via output EQ, its most likely from the frequency curve of the sources, especially the microphones, are a bit smiley curve centric. But compared to RTA displays on a computer or tablet, the QU 16 RTA is “short”.

4. Lack of labelling on the faders, requires me to physically put labels on the fader strip, which looks tacky in 2023, Well you get what you pay for !.. LED or other electronic Labels on fader strips would have been an excellent addition to this product.

5. No matrix, to enable me simply add some audience microphones to the main L/R outputs, and send this combined matrix output, to be used for broadcast.

That’s a relatively short wish list, come to think of it.

Ah forgot one :

6 A Wi-Fi access point should have been included. Now I’ve got to go and buy one to enable Wifi based control of monitors, by the choir and musicians.

[Brian]

Has far as #6 goes…. I’m glad A&H doesn’t include a wifi access point. IMHO it would be a waste of money to do so for several reasons. First, placing a wifi access point inside a metal container like a mixing console is not a great place to put it. Sure you can add external antennas, but the ones that would be included with the console would be worthless, requiring people to spend more money anyway. Just ask the Behringer X-Air users how well their wifi works. Second, wifi technology continues to advance. The QU was released in 2013 I believe, so any wifi technology that would have been included in the system is very much outdated now (no Wifi 6 or 6e for example). Third, a large number of users either don’t need a wi-fi access point, or already have them installed in their facility.

In the end, it’s much better that A&H save that money (R&D as well as hardware costs) and allow users the flexibility in choosing a wireless system that is going to work best for their situation.

[SteffenR]

#1
I guess you handle the settings wrong for your goal.
I can use the compression without audible artifacts. It depends on the signals processed.
And btw, every processing block can be bypassed.

#4
Then you have invested in the wrong desk.

#5
Again, you choose the wrong tool. All other QU series mixers feature 4 matrix outputs and groups.

[Lee7]

@OK1

Personally I think you should have spent a bit more time researching the right desk for your needs instead of going out, buying the said desk and then complaining about what it should have. If you wanted 96khz sampling you should have opted for the SQ series…And as digital mixers go, they don’t come much more straightforward than the QU-16, the best desk to make that jump from analogue to digital.

Also, you might not be the best teacher to be teaching others regarding how to use the desk.

[Mike C]

Your comment item #6 about built in WIFI at least for me sums up the rest of your comments as in not worth commenting on.

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