[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Interestingly I found this on one of the RME forums regarding recording direct to disc from their Fireface UFX:
https://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic.php?id=15454

I have used the RME gear myself for years and found their drivers rock-solid.
The suggestion in this little blog post is to use SSD drives and I note that RME allow for USB sticks upto 2TB.
Why do A&H explicitly advise against USB sticks? Is a SATA SSD formatted to FAT32 any different to a FAT32 USB stick vs Disk??
Anyone tried an SSD?

How come this issue doesn’t occur with DAW- laptops have HDD right? Better buffering? Or does it happen infact..
I noticed in one these threads someone pointed out that you can stream USB B and write to the QDrive simultaneously and it does seem to work.. wondering if someone having these issues can try a test with USB B and QDrive simultaneously– see if it is a QDrive issue only.

Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Totally understand that the QU should do what it says on the can and for many HDD recording may be THE big feature and totally frustrating.. but I for one will simply record to a laptop until it is sorted. Not ideal but let’s face it I’m setting up a bit of gear anyway 🙂

That said– does this skipping / drop out happen when USB B streaming as opposed to QDRive capture? Has anybody actually experienced this over USB B?

Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Sorry>> I map the LR main output in my DAW to send to hardware CH 23/24 on the QU — should have been 21/22.. opps…

So lets try that again..

>> Turn on QU then DAW and make sure that DAW can see the QU. If DAW can see the QU it should be able to see 22 outputs– 16 ch + the 3 stereo ST1..3.
>> I map the LR main output in my DAW to send to hardware CH 21/22 on the QU. Note the channel USB inputs in the QU seem hard mapped (far as I can see anyway) so 21/22 infact corresponds to ST3 on the QU
>> Go to QU and select ST3. Press Processing button.. select the channel.. select FN and make sure that Global USB source is USB B Streaming and that ST3 source is USB B.
>> Hit play in your DAW you should see you DAW L/R main out signal on ST3

Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Hi
I’m using a mac but I suspect your “issue” is on the QU set side not the DAW..
This is better explained in the user guide (make sure you have the latest downloaded from A&H site though).
But here is what I do.. lets keep it simple and do LR main mix output playback

>> Turn on QU then DAW and make sure that DAW can see the QU. If DAW can see the QU it should be able to see 22 outputs– 16 ch + the 3 stereo ST1..3.
>> I map the LR main output in my DAW to send to hardware CH 23/24 on the QU. Note the channel USB inputs in the QU seem hard mapped so 21/22 infact corresponds to ST3 on the QU
>> Go to QU and select ST3. Press Processing button.. select the channel.. select FN and make sure that Global USB source is USB B Streaming and that ST3 source is USB B.
>> Hit play in your DAW you should see signal on ST3 🙂

Hope this helps.
Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Yes, I have. Sometimes you need to click on the lines to restore the colors.
Whether there any difference in PEQ behavior depending upon whether the colors are shown I can’t say- maybe a bug maybe there is a subtle feature I’m missing…

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Interesting..
So if I understood it – this post seems to be about getting 2 QUs to act as separate control surfaces for DAW automation so that you don’t have swap layers on a single QU machine– am I correct? I can see why you would want to do this..

But stepping back — can you stream input from 2 QU16 into Reaper or any other DAW for that matter and in this way record 32+ channels at once? That would be cool..
How do I set up to do that if it is possible?

Thanks for the post Davyd. Hope you are well.

Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

I have the Seagate Expansion Portable USB power 1TB drive and it is not really working out with the QU.. I did record a show with it and even though it took AGES — like over 60 secs for the drive to mount- it did work
But then QU just stopped recognising it.. When checked it out with the DiskUtils om my mac it was saying that the FAT32 had boot sector issues.. so I can’t trust it with my QU and its back to square 1.

I will say this– I don’t think the USB power on (my) QU is all that good. I say this because I have a FAT32 formatted portable drive in an enclosure that I use to swap data around. It needs a bit of juice — on some machines it powers fine, on others it struggles but works and on some machines it will only run if I use a cable that takes extra power by using 2 USB ports on the machine. My QU gets nowhere near powering this up on a single USB.

Thanks- I will check out some of the drives listed above.
Andy

Thanks

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Hi there,
DAWs are a personal thing I suspect.. +1 for Reaper from me, I’ve used quite a few over the years– Reaper is a great product with nice balance of usability and depth and a good support community. And did I mention really cheap? 🙂 And you can download a trial .. is a as good a starting point as any I’d say..

And yep with Reaper create a project and just drag and drop the files from your QU’s hardrive onto the window– Reaper will ask you whether you want them on separate tracks– you do.. and you are good to go 🙂 You can get instructional material on Youtube and there are some 3rd party tutorials out there. You will prob need to take a look if you are totally new to DAWs.

Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Hi there,
You should note that mixes 6-10 are stereo but I guess you can pan hard L/R the channels into those stereo mixes to keep them separate for output to your D3200

Best to use it with a DAW though 🙂 You might end up going that way and the desk does has a degree of automation with a DAW.

All best
Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Hey Tom,
I love my QU16 as well and can highly recommend it.
One thing though– I would make the point that whilst you can take a feed of 22 channels into you DAW over USB, the mixer does not have hardware channel direct outs or even insert sockets for each of those channels like say, my MIXWIZ and I suspect your ONYX does…
So no it does not have direct outs in the sense I think you mean.

What that means for you I think is that if you intend to use you D3200 to record, you would be limited to sending or submixing the channels you want to record to the 10 MIX outs of the QU16 unless ..
a) your D3200 can take a USB and see the QU16 as a DAW can OR
b) you can route through a DAW onwards to your D3200 though other hardware (and I suspect you don’t have that from your post)

So ideal as a desk infront of a D3200..maybe not?
Is a very, very cool mixer though..
Hope this helps
Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Ahh.. thought that was worth confirming.
Thanks for replying so quickly Nicola.

Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Ah ha.. yep…ok so QU16 can’t read a disk in NTFS to reformat. Needs to be in FAT32 first. Fair enough.

AH support: Definitely worth making this point explicitly in the article below to save frustrations..

https://allen-heath.helpserve.com/Knowledgebase/Article/View/774/273/understanding-qu-drive-and-usb

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Thanks for the input all.
Issue of drop outs on Mavericks (10.9.2) with Reaper64 seems to be resolved for me by QU16 firmware v1.4 🙂 So far anyway– I’m very pleased..

All credit where it is due– it is hard to pull this stuff together and the QU16 is a one very handy piece of gear. I’m stoked with mine 🙂

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

Yeh it does seem quite fussy really.. the team should perhaps take a look at this.
Got there in the end though 🙂

Love 1.4 — the QU16 is a very cool piece of gear.
Andy

[WaihekeSoundieParticipant]

And thanks for the comments guys.. really appreciated. Its 11:30pm here in NZ and I’ve got work to do so the help and support is really really appreciated.

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