My Qu-16 has just been delivered and I used it for the very first time in a venue yesterday. It was an Acoustic Open Mic Assen event with stage changes every 15 minutes, which creates a kind of sound man’s hell normally. I’m not (yet) an experienced sound engineer and I can’t compare the mixer with other digital mixers, but I’m really enthusiastic and so were all the musicians and audience showing up. QU-PAD, the iPad app, works great, giving you the option to walk around and adjust the sound. The combination Qu-16 and 3 Bose L1 systems (2 FOH and 1 to provide the stage sound) with 6 bass modules result in an extremely high quality sound.
All the relevant settings are very easy to find in the app. They are literally under your thumbs when holding the iPad. An experienced sound man helped me along yesterday and, because of the low barrier to use the app, I learned more about sound, compressors, muting groups, HPF, gates etc. then in years before. One of the advantages of walking around with an iPad is that you can place the mixer at save place at stage instead of at a table in the middle of the venue.
Just to finish and not end up with an endless post:
– the update feature for the firmware works great
– the recording (RL or 16 tracks), as soon as you know the proper sequence of the keys, is very easy and so was the preparation of the harddisk.
– adding a wifi device for use of QU-APP was a kind of plug and play experience.
– my end conclusion is that A&H really delivers value for money.
To answer your question: Yes I’m pretty sure that the Qu-16 does fits with your requirements with drum, bass, gtr, keys and 3 or 4 vocals.
