SQ firmware V1.3

[Flo84]

Hi all,

after reading a lot of posts on this forum and on the Facebook SQ users group.
I would like to share just my feelings – not a judgment towards the people – a few days after the release of the update …

I fully understand some of the remarks and I am the first to ask myself questions about a variety of topics …
(In my opinion the mixer was a little too young when it came out on the market.)

Many people are disappointed (again I understand it) but I feel that this feeling is due to a lack of information about the product they have or will buy.

This lack can be due to several reasons but I remain convinced that reading the manual (even in English) corresponding to the current firmware gives a lot of information on the functions available at the moment (and not to speculate on those which the will someday … or not).

So my thought is:
People who need specific functions (but need to know their needs …) that are not currently implemented should postpone their purchase (if it is possible) or take another mixer that already has these functions …
Maybe contact the brand directly to try to have accurate answers …

I know that it’s not necessarily easy all the time and that one would always want to have + and quickly … but considering the cost it’s worth taking the time to learn about the mixer system.

Again, no judgment just a felt;)
Bests

[Mfk0815]

Hmm, in my opinion the SQ is a real great device. Good size, good audio and, asfar as i can it say, also a good architecure (with some weakness e.g. the USB design). Also allot of the basic software stuff is fine. But it seems that a lot of little things are not thought to the end. An example is the missing mono matrix. Or, we now got with the new update the possibility to assign also some FX parameters to the soft rotaries, which is a great idea. But why is there no possibilty to assign name and color for that. Now you can read FXtime or FXAmnt on the display and all of them are colored magenta. This cannot be the big issue to implement this but it helps the user a lot.
Or why can we now assign the PAFL bus to any physical output but there is no possibility to control the output level? Ok, you can use the listen bus which level can be controlled. But only in a sub, sub page of the Setup or when you change the Masterfader mode. Why not a assignable fader for both, the layers as well as the soft rotaries? Little missing things which complicates the workflow of the users.

BTW. I do notthink that the SQ is good for a theater, even if there would be a mono matrix. The scene system is only rudimentary implemented and not helpful for theatrical work. But thats another story.

[JoelKlein]

For now until the matrix gets the momo option, I send out everything to their respective groups, and from those groups to a mono bus, from the mono bus to the matrix. So the matrix gets a mono mix. Now I can use 6 mono speakers if needed, and although I only have 3 faders to control 6 speakers I can pan the output more left or more right which equals the volume…

[Jens-Droessler]

I get more and more the feeling a lonely intern with no real world live sound experience is developing the firmware. If the next firmware release is again multiple months in the future no more SQ for me. It raises the question what this forum and the facebook groups and so on are good for, if the least wanted features get implemented and the easy ones with lots of request don’t make it into a firmware revision half a year in the making. Sorry, A&H, that’s just messed up.

[Mfk0815]

In my dayjob I am software developer. So I have some insider knowledge on how development is done today. In the past most developers coming from other engineering disciplines, because IT was not or less educated in those days but they have a lot of knowledge about the so called businessdomain (in our case audio engineering and mixing desks) Today we have a lot of well educated software developer. But those developers only know a lot of software development but less or nothing about the business domain. So they can implement a particular feature but do not look over the edge of the plate. On the past this was done by the developerbased on his deep knowledge of the background of this feature. So what can be done? Either educate the developers in the business domain, use a test team with deep knowledge of the domain or letthe users do that job for you. I cannot exactly say which one is done at A&H, I just hope that it is not the third option only;-)

But on the other hand people tends to forget how long firmware improvements lasts also for other consoles. For instance the jump from 1.0.x to the well filled package of 2.x lasts round about 18 month for the X32. For other consoles its more or less the same. So A&H still have the good chace to surprise us.

[monki]

Just a heads up for anyone else who might run into the same issue:

If I try to multitrack record to my SQdrive under 1.3, I get consistent glitches in the recorded tracks, occurring about once every minute. Rolling back to 1.2.2 fixes the problem.

Something’s messed up in 1.3?

[Andrien]

Dank, no multiband compressor again on FX? And no desktop editor?

[lightingman117]

Personally, I’m happy & thankful.

I’d say the board is 90-95% at this point of being able to do all it said it could do in the original literature & reference manual.

All other features are ‘wants’ from the community, not needs. Though, I do agree this needs at-minimum to have 98% of the ‘features’ the X32 has in order to compete; especially considering Midas will be releasing/announcing their new board within a year.

As a software test developer myself I understand quite easily why this firmware upgrade took so long to implement & test (mostly test). Everyone sees it as simple, but really there is a lot under the hood they had to do and I don’t want them mucking with that much code and not testing it thoroughly.
You don’t mind if Microsoft Word crashes in the middle of your paper, you can open recovery and get the old copy no big deal. You’d hate to have your board crash in the middle of a live show. Sure it’ll reboot with the same settings, but you NEVER want to reboot (in the middle of a live show).

That said, I think hiring 1 dev & 2 tester devs would be better for release schedules. SQ should have released with 1.2 in Jan and 1.3 following sometime mid/late summer. That said, we’re not going to change A&H’s strategy or profit margin. They have done the analysis’ and decided this made them the most money and balanced community annoyance.

All-in-all it is exactly what I expected and exactly when I expected (actually sooner, they said Q3 I figured end of Oct).

Things I’m super happy about:
-Input patch library (hopefully we can soft-key this for virutal sound check)
-User permissions (so I can sell the board to clients)
-New DEEP processing (I’ll post in that thread)

Thank you A&H Team!

[lightingman117]

So I’ve poured over the manual and the update.

I gotta say it again, great work A&H!

All who got their underwear on too tight need to loosen up. This was a ton of dev time and work that went into this firmware release. I’m surprised it had as much as it did, but I’m super happy. Yes, there is still plenty of ‘features’ that we want. But that doesn’t take away the great accomplishment here.

Keith, one thing y’all didn’t put in the release notes is the Ducker; that was a major feature request that was fulfilled.

[Swell]

Ducker mode is explained on page 30.

https://www.allen-heath.com/media/SQ_ReferenceGuide_V1_3_0.pdf

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