SQ5 Effects Routing

[NivraParticipant]

Hi. I am an audio technician and we recently received new units of A&H SQ5 digital Mixers, we have been using other brands in mixing and having the SQ series is kind of new to us. I would like to know how to properly patch an effect into a Channel, usually I use the last channels (Channel 31 for Delay and Channel 32 for Reverb) as main faders for the effects and I usually put the effects sends on Aux 7 and Aux 8 for the delay and reverb respectively.

I would like to ask someone from the group to provide a step by step instruction on how to do this.

Thank you very much.

[TobiParticipant]

Hi Nivra,
bad news first: your delay and reverb will not be on Aux 7 and 8 anymore 🙂

In fact, there are “official” Youtube Videos how to use send effects (and also insert effects):

In that playlist the 3rd and the 4th video show using the FX Rack. If you are new to A&H Mixers, then I would suggest just to take 30minuten and have a look at the complete playlist. I think you will find the work with SQ quite pleaseant…

If you have further questions, please come back.

Best Regards,
Tobias

[TerryParticipant]

Hi Nivra.

It sounds like you are coming from an analog setup, where what you describe is quite common.

It’s also possible you’re on an older digital console, as some of them did not have dedicated FX routing. The SQ does have dedicated FX routing, which means you do not have to use up Auxes (Mixes on SQ) to drive the reverb and delay, and you don’t have to use up input channels to get the signal into the PA.

There are four dedicated FX buses, accessed through the top 4 blue buttons on the right side of the desk, which are routed through FX rack slots 1-4. These buses are in addition to the 12 Mix/Group buses the desk has. Each FX bus also has a corresponding stereo return channel available in the SQ (fader Layer C by default IIRC) which do not count against the 48-channel processing limit – in effect giving the SQ 56 channels.

The FX rack has four empty slots in it as well, which can be used to create additional FX buses, but it’s more common to use these as bus or channel inserts (multi-band compression, dynamic EQ, etc) because you would need to give up channels otherwise.

[NivraParticipant]

Hi Terry,

Yes, I have been using Digico and Midas Pro series for the past years and this is what I got used to do. Thanks for the input and this needs to get being used to for the first few days. If ever I have any questions, I will let you know.

Thanks.

N

[NivraParticipant]

Hi Toby,

I will do check the videos. It was very helpful and thanks for that. If ever I need to know some other stuff, I will let you know. Thanks,

N

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