SQ & DAW Control

[Jordan T. Hurt]

I’ve seen a few threads on this, but there’s something that I’m missing. I’ve got an SQ-7 and I’m trying to use it as a DAW Controller with Cubase 9.5. I’ve already made sure that I’m running 1.2.2 firmware and I’ve downaloded and installed the DAW Controller Driver. Restarted both the SQ and my PC afterward, looked at several videos on YouTube about how to connect a DAW controller with Cubase and every time I try to use the “Learn” mode, nothing from the SQ is recognized, although it does show up in the MIDI Input and MIDI Output dropdown menus and I’m already using the SQ-7 for audio input and output for my PC. What am I missing? Apologies if this is a Cubase/PC issue and not a console issue – I’ve just switch from a Mac with Logic to a PC with Cubase so I’m not familiar enough with troubleshooting everything correctly yet.

[KeithJ A&H]

Hi Jordan,

The DAW Control Driver takes the MIDI messages sent from the SQ (or other supported A&H console) and translates them into standard control surface messages.
In the case of the SQ, there are 32 MIDI channel strips available, which when used with the DAW Control Driver translate to 4 virtual controller instances.

You do not need to use the learn function, or the MIDI directly from the SQ, but instead set up 4 control surfaces in Cubase, using the 4 DAW Control Driver ports.

Hopefully this gets you going in the right direction, but if you’re still having issues, just contact us using support.allen-heath.com and we can run through your setup with you.

Cheers,
Keith.

[moebius]

Just to check if I got that right:

– The SQ series offer 48 channels with hardware layout in 16/24/32 channels
– Setting up your DAW to have 16/24/32 channels would make sense, as they can be controlled by setting up a layer that maps the “DAW-control MIDI channel strips” to the physical hardware (or do a wild mix between SQ parameters and MIDI parameters on any layer to confuse the Russians).
– Setting up your DAW to have 48 channels does not make sense, as there are only 32 MIDI channel strips, ie no option to fully represent a console with expansion boxes.
– While there are 6 layers on any SQ desk, there is no option to control more than 32 MIDI parameters, as the number of MIDI channel strips is limited.
– The more MIDI channel strips you use for DAW control, the less fader/knobs are left for tasks like plugin/synth/fx control.

What´s the reason behind the 32 channel limit? To have MIDI channels is great in the first place, don´t get me wrong! It´s just that I´m in the middle of a studio rebuild and wonder if the SQ could make a Mackie MCU Pro redundant or not (minus transport controls of course). Just need to plan for the central desk layout, which could mean 1-3 SQ desks doing everything vs. a combination of 1-2 SQs and dedicated MIDI controls like MCU.

[KeithJ A&H]

Hey moebius,

• The SQ XCVI core (same across the range) can mix 48 input processing channels. With Tie Lines and a Dante card, you could actually record up to 64 channels, but at least 16 would have to come directly from the preamp with no processing.
• The 32 MIDI channels mean you can lay out MIDI strips on every channel strip of an SQ-7.
• To control more than 32 channels in your DAW, you can assign bank up/down to SoftKeys 🙂 So this works in the same way as MCU. You can also assign MMC controls, or use on-screen transport controls.
• MIDI channel strips and SoftKey/Soft Rotary controls are separate – you can even assign different MIDI channels to different Soft Rotaries!

Hope this helps 🙂

Cheers,
Keith.

[Mfk0815]

@KeithJ: you wrote “but at least 16 would have to come directly from the preamp with no processing.”
How can the preamps be setup (gain, PAD and +48V) and controlled in such a scenario? Since the preamp parameters are only accessible via the input processing channels, as far as I know.

[KeithJ A&H]

@mfk0815 – Sockets would need to be patched temporarily for setup, but preamp/socket settings on the preamp screen reflect the actual setting of the preamp/socket and are retained when unpatched. Preamp settings also reappear when re-patched and you’ll notice that multiple channels with the same source share ‘Socket Preamp’ settings.

So Gain, 48V phantom power and Pad are all socket/hardware based and not part of channel processing.

(https://www.allen-heath.com/media/SQ_ReferenceGuide_V1_3_0.pdf#page=19).

Cheers!
Keith.

[Mfk0815]

Thank you for that clarification Keith. I was just curious. I know that the preamp parameters are part of the hardware thats why I wrote “Since the preamp parameters are only accessible via the input processing channels”;-)

Is there any chance to get an extra screen to control the preamp parameters also for thos input sockets which are not assigned to input processing channels?

Regards
Klaus

[KeithJ A&H]

Hi Klaus,

I’ll note it as a feature request.
We have socket control on dLive from the I/O screen, which is the most sensible way to do it.

Thanks,
Keith.

[Nanex]

Is there a way to use panning in daw control? (Logic)?
With a sq5!

And can you use it in a way, so your
Desk shows up the names of the channels in logic?
Because when working in banks of 16, in a 120 channel project it’s not always clear, where you are at the moment..

Already set up my desk to control the faders, mutes, solos
But found no way with naming and panning..
I hope there’s a solution!

[Anonymous]

Hi everybody 🙂 I bought an Sq7 a few days ago. I was a Presonus User before but due that they dont support Daw control for Cubase and only with Studio one I changed to this great Console . I am still setting up everything and i cant find the Menu where to set the Faders to Midi… In the reference guide it is not clear and all what i find mostly as a pdf file (online) is a guide with the menu from the QU series… I have installed the Daw control driver on my Mac Pro… i have setup the Mackie control devices in cubase (4 times). I just cant find in my Sq7 that part where to assign the strips to send Midi… all i found is a part in “setup” then Surface .. there i saw DCA/midi but i am confused… Could maybe someone please explain where to go in the SQ7 Menu ? Thank you in advance. 🙂

[KeithJ A&H]

@claudekass – you must have been very close! Touch the DCA/MIDI button in the ‘Setup > Surface > Strip Assign’ screen, then touch and drag the top row to the left to see MIDI channels. You can then just drag and drop these to a free channel strip in the bottom row.
This is shown on page 53 of the reference guide: (https://www.allen-heath.com/media/SQ_ReferenceGuide_V1_3_0.pdf#page=53).
Hope this helps!
Keith.

[Anonymous]

@Keith Ohh jezzz I was very close yeah 😉 My bad sorry. This confirms once again that most errors or mistakes happen because of the user 🙂 . A simple swipe and there it is! Thank you very much!

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