[bullmoonParticipant]

No loopback that I have seen. RME has this too through TotalMix, but that feature is fairly advanced. The CQ is pretty basic, but a great little box.

My RME UFX+ in my project studio just died – needs a new PS – and I’d be shut down if I didn’t have the CQ to hold me over until I get the UFX repaired. I continue to be impressed with just how handy the CQ is.

I was just reviewing some old gig tapes that we made through an A&H 16ch analog mixer into DA-88s back in the 90s and the sound is just incredible compared to far more expensive studio pres I have. That’s why I jumped on the CQ as soon as I saw it. I’m still blown away by the incredible value.

[bullmoonParticipant]

What is the use and purpose of the Ethernet port on a CQ18T mixer? Can you use that to connect to a computer DAW?

The Ethernet port lets you connect to your local network whereas the WIFI port creates its own network that other devices can connect to wirelessly (where no local net is present). Both ports allow for control via the CQ app – no audio passes over the network in either case.

[bullmoonParticipant]

On the CQ18, channels 1-16 works as you’d expect and if set for USB/SDHC, you can send audio to them from an app and you’ll see levels on the meters 1-16. For 17/18, if you route audio from an app to those, they show up on the Stereo fader, and channels 19/20 show up on the USB fader. I’d expect the CQ20 to be similar, but maybe offset by the additional channels.

[bullmoonParticipant]

“CQ’s manufactured before September 2023 were loaded with firmware
V1.0.1. Data stored using this version is incompatible with later firmware
and a full reset should be carried out after the first firmware update.”

How do we know for sure? Mine has a ship date on the carton to Guitar Center on September 12. Also says V1.0.1. But as I recall, the first time I used it in October ’23, the CQ app made me do an update and maybe a reset – hard to remember for certain.

Seems to be working, but just want to be sure.

[bullmoonParticipant]

The bug is when using the iPad App, not the On-Screen built-in display. The other thing about this is that the current Input Source is not indicated with multi-select, nor is the source change indicated. So, you don’t really know until you leave muti-select what you may have done to the input source.

[bullmoonParticipant]

yes – agree – I tried to use multiselect on the iPad app to switch the channels from analog to SDHC and it didn’t work. But it works fine on the CQ18 screen. That said, I’m blown away still by how well all this kit works.

[bullmoonParticipant]

The A&H records at 48khz (or 96k). I use Nuendo which is essentially Cubase. You must create the Cubase project as 48k and also make sure the Cubase ASIO settings for your audio interface is also set to 48k, unless you are using the CQ as the audio interface and it will be at 48k already. Once you have done that, you can bring the tracks into Cubase or record them in from the CQ. If you don’t set Cubase and the project up correctly beforehand it will probably give you problems with mismatched audio sample rates. It’s hard to say what Melodyne as a plugin would make of that.

I have not tried Melodyne with any of this, but I’d be safe and keep the audio and Cubase Project at 48k – why not? If you need to convert to 44.1 to burn to a CD or whatever, do that after you have mixed down to stereo.

[bullmoonParticipant]

I’m not sure of the point here. The CQ is not a DAW if that is what you mean, but I don’t think most people are expecting a DAW since that’s not how the product is positioned. It’s a very nice live mixer that can also record the performance. That’s how I use it and I can drop the tracks into a DAW for processing if I need to.

We like to record our performances and the CQ makes it easy to do – much better than hauling separate recording gear around. It’s pretty remarkable little mixer, I think.

[bullmoonParticipant]

When you switch between recording and playback, you have to go into Config and change the channel input from Analog to USB/SDHC so that the recorded audio is played back through the channel.

[bullmoonParticipant]

To freely move around in the recording, there is a timeline slider across the bottom of the RECORD Screen. It’s easy to miss and took me a while to notice it.

[bullmoonParticipant]

A 32 GB card holds quite a “bit”. 😉 I filled up a 64GB card – took a while, like 8 hours for 16 tracks *48/16. No issues.

bits SR channels Min MB GB
16 48 1 240 1318.36 1.32
16 48 16 240 21093.75 21.09
16 48 24 240 31640.63 31.64
24 96 1 240 3955.08 3.96
24 96 16 120 31640.63 31.64

[bullmoonParticipant]

took a bit to realize step 2 was only accessed by tapping the Trim icon on the USB channel strip in Processing

You can also do it from the config page and that lets you use Multiselect if you need to set several channels to USB or Analog – and you likely will need to at some point. I find it easier to do it from Config.

[bullmoonParticipant]

One thing you can do is wire a PC over wired ethernet directly to the CQ and run CQMixpad app on the PC which brings up a screen almost identical to the CQ built-in screens. You should be able to do this with a single CAT5/CAT6 cable and no routers or other network gear, Just PC–>CAT5e–>CQ.

There’s a demo mode in the app so you can check it out by downloading it.

[bullmoonParticipant]

I used the gain assistant for instruments and in addition set auto-gain for vox mics and that was a good thing – people get more exuberant when performing versus a sound check. 🙂 But those two features made setting gain a breeze.

[bullmoonParticipant]

I found the easiest way to get audio files from the CQ into Nuendo was to set up Input channels in Nuendo corresponding to the CQ Channels: In1, In2, etc. Then I set the CQ channels config option to USB/SDHC, armed the channels in Nuendo, hit record, then hit play on the CQ and just recorded them in Nuendo like that.

Otherwise, you copy the files from the SD and drag them into the DAW. That works, but for stereo channels, you’ll have to convert them into a stereo interleaved file. I dragged the mono channels into Nuendo and used it’s convert option to create stereo files. That all worked but was a lot of steps – I found playing them back from the CQ and recording them into the DAW to be simpler.

And the reverse is also a very easy way to get tracks out of the DAW and onto the card – create output busses (Out 1, Out 2, etc) on the DAW for each track corresponding to the CQ tracks, so Vox would be assigned to Out1, for example. Arm input 1 and any other inputs on the CQ set to USB/SDHC for input source, start record, start DAW playback. This works perfectly.

USB Drives, sticks, etc., do no work for multitrack recording. If you read between the lines in the manual, this is heavily implied but not stated directly as far as I can tell. I have used a 32GB and a 64BG SD card and they seem fine so far, but I have not tried to see what happens as they fill up. But yes, for 16 track recordings, a 32GB card won’t go far.

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