SQ Complete Automation

[LucasParticipant]

Hi!

I love my SQ-7 Console and have been building around it (creating the best work environment for it) for about four years. I haven’t come to need this feature as yet, since I’ve been fairly musically inactive during this whole studio expansion process, and I’ve been anticipating addressing this particular topic for quite some time, and now it is time to lay it all on you.

I used to own a Soundcraft Spirit 328 Digital console, and that thing was fantastic… Most specifically when it came to MIDI implementation. They had the entire thing mapped out from *TOP TO BOTTOM* !!!! I was able to create a completely comprehensive Logic Environment with every last detail of the board mapped to either a virtual knob or fader inside Logic and control every parameter via MIDI-recorded automation…. Since I got dissuaded from that setup by someone who undercut its value in light of 96k back in 2005, I reluctantly sold it for a meager fraction of what I spent on it, only to hope that one day I would find its replacement in a 96k version….

*ENTER THE SQ SERIES CONSOLES*

So….
What are the chances of a *COMPLETE* MIDI implementation of *ALL* the SQ features so I can do the same thing in this day and age ???? I have thus far been able to detect fader movements and get the board to respond to my own MIDI messages…. and that’s about it…. I am sure there is more that can be done and I am *PRETTY SURE* I’m not the only one wanting something like this, so please do enlighten me as to the plans for this kind of thing. Would be truly amazing and invaluable for my recording and studio engineering session flow…. Eagerly awaiting a positive response to this question…. 🙂

[Highflyer1953Participant]

https://www.allen-heath.com/content/uploads/2023/11/SQ-MIDI-Protocol-Issue5.pdf

[HughParticipant]

The OP has an interesting story that is missing some important information. There had to be a prevailing sonic quality improvement reason to dump, at a deep discount, the midi automated Soundcraft desk that performed beautifully with the Logic DAW! Blaming it on third party advice makes no sense to me.

Digico and A&H have been focused on world class sonic quality processing for more than 25 years. They are industry leaders in the concert console market largely because of the sonic quality their desks offer: Ancillary automation the OP is requesting apparently is not very high on their critical feature list. The entire question is somewhat akin to asking for automatic transmissions in formula 1 race cars.
The core bus and input capacity of the SQ line is identical so I opted for a small footprint SQ5 for both live gigs and project studio front end capture. The SQ5s Waves card enables tie lines direct from my DX32 prime I/Os to a Digigrid/Waves LV1 recording system that has a boat load of bells and whistles if needed in post production. The Waves card has also become a big deal with large scale 100+ input concert consoles to allow automation with many of the Waves plug-ins providing needed automation with server assisted low latency. This is what many big systems are deploying today with great success.
Hugh

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