[DilettantParticipant]

Would also suggest to use the scenes Feature for that.

I personally often have live Gigs with 2-5 acting Groups on stage. So I simply set up
a small Collection of Scenes:

– one Scene “Reset” – that’s always the first scene I load. All Channels muted, all Faders at Zero, all FX bypass. Kind of “Mute all”, but not exactly since I can easily draw up single faders to make single Signals audible which is a good basis for line Checks and such things.

– one Scene “Moderation” – all muted except the speakers’ Microphone, route Speaker even to the farer stage monitors so anyone can hear what is said. EQ and (low) Reverb Settings for best-understandable Talking. Maybe also some stereo Player on St Input is not strictly muted here so background or fill-in Audio can be playbacked to Moderation if needed (I assign the level of that to one of the soft rotaries then). Also there could be more than one “Mod” Mic Channel
and all of them assigned to the AMM so some small “stage discussion” or multi-Person-Moderation can be handled by this, too.

– one Scene “Playback” – play some decent Background Music. Just one Line-In from some Playback device open to the front line, all Mics and other Inputs muted. To use when there is a longe Break on Stage. Playback Device can be the USB Stick (if there are “fitting” WAV-files on it), some MP3-Player or simply a Tablet or Smartphone. I have a Bluetooth Receiver attached to St0 for that but you can also attach the line inputs at the Mixer Desk to some player or assign any other Inputs.

– one “Action” Scene for each acting Group. Of course, that could be one for each played Set, too. I setup these when doing the Sound Checks/Rehearsals if possible,
based on Riders for the Group or reasonable Defaults.

Then I assign the “Recall Scene x” Function for each of these Scenes to some Soft Buttons and “Store last” to another one. So when making changes at the Sound Check I simply press “Store last” to save changes to the Scene (don’t forget to switch to the right scene at begin of each sound check, of course).

Later at the live Gig, I simply switch with a single Button between Pause, Moderation and the Action Groups. Of course, if a Group needs more than one Scene, it is possible to assign “next Scene” to a Soft Button, and bring the Scenes into the right Order, too. So in an ideal case, I do not have to touch any faders or settings live in the Gig at all – it’s even no Problem to handle that from the tablet App while acting on stage or sitting in the Audience away from the FoH desk.

Each Scene includes much more than reasonable Defaults – it can change Routing, Gain, assigned FX, Monitor Mixes, Button Assignments and so on. Of Course, I also have a “Panic” Mute Group which mutes anything combined with a recall safe and an assignment to the same Soft button in any Scene.

One Feature I am missing are LCD Strips on the Soft Buttos to give them descriptions. I solved that for me by a) making Button assignents as static as possible and b) printing nice Labels on magnetic Photo Paper Strips which can be cut with any scissors and easily be applied on the desk and Satagebox surfaces (which are made from steel so magnetic labels work fine there).

Oh BTW, I would appreciate to have a possibility to “scribble” the Soft Buttons in the Tablet App so I can see their scene assignment even in the compacter view modes. But that is not really a Problem.

[DilettantParticipant]

Not a perfect solution, but luckily the Mixer Surface is (and the surfaces of all the Stageboxes are as well) made of Steel.
So you can just use some magnetic foto papers, like this (dunno if the forum admin accepts that link to Amazon):

Just print the labels you need, cut and place them on the Mixer surface beside your buttons. You
can exchange that at any time fast and without damage. If you have several Sets of Labels, you
can stack “one on top of the other” as well.

[DilettantParticipant]

You can add Soft keys to the fader banks and trigger them there in Mixpad.

[DilettantParticipant]

Untested since I have no such card, but might that be already possible using the “Tag Lines” Feature?

[DilettantParticipant]

Just a Hint: pushing faders a little while holding “reset” key will exactly move them to unity / -infinity (depending on pushing direction). That’s a very handy feature, just try it. Maybe this reduces your need for a display value a little bit.

Of Course, you can also get (and enter) the actual Fader dB Values on the touchscreen or with the SQ Mixpad App.

[DilettantParticipant]

Don’t think this is a Mixing desk feature (besides you may have messed up the routing of the drum he

If possible don’t route the base drum to vocal’s monitor wedges. If vocals really need that, in-ear monitoring would be an option.

Choose not too responsive vocal mics with good directivity patterns for the use case. Place and direct them so they catch up vocals, not speakers (monitor, front line speakers, back line speakers, whatever) playing back drum signals. beware of spherical capsules on small headset mics – maybe some cardioid pattern is a better choice here. In Studios, sometimes some mobile plexi glass plates can help with such things, live this maybe optical disturbing.
Beware of reflections of the kick sound on hard walls or windows Sometimes you just need to change some Speaker direction a little or plase some damping thing a little before a reflecting Wall or Window glass (_before_, not _on_ the reflecting plane – you cannot damp anything there).

lookout for decroupling of structure-transmitted noise. Place Vocal Mic Stands, foot machine and drum speakers on rubber mats or bass decouplers or fly that speakers so they don’t kick the floor directly. Massive stone or concrete floor helps here, too..

Use a steep high pass filter on vocals to lower grip sonic and subsonic parts from the bass drum and eq your vocals poperly. Maybe a little fast ducking of the drum by the vocals can help but thats difficile to adjust. and may sound “pumpy”.

And finally: IMHO you will almost _never_ get perfectly decoupled mic tracks when recording/picking up live on stage. That is nearly impossible but doesn’t really matter anyway, just mix your tracks and use ears most of the time you can get a reasonable sound anyway. All that Mictracks can bring in is part of the music/show anyway, so there is nothing wrong using it. Just watch out for big damage like feedback and get all the music to all the listeners (but not too loud, that is another old mistake giving problems over problems).

[DilettantParticipant]

I agree that this wouuld be handy.

Helped myself on the issue by creating magnetic label strips which can be changed very fast. I use simple magnetic Inkjet Photo Paper for that, works fairly well and you can simply stack the stripes on the front plate of the stagebox or any other steel/iron plate. Same thing works on SQ6 Mixer surface, too.

[DilettantParticipant]

The Level LEDs on the Console Desk should show high load by alternating colors, if Signal is in another Layer that will be shown the same way, too. There is some Description in the Manual.

However, I definitely would appreciate to have an additional “Input” Metering Point on ADC post gain.

Those LED give no really precise Idea of how much headroom there is on the Input and any later metering point may be influenced by processing. Especially for self-mixing live situations where you often have to “guess” some gain levels because there was no way or time to get a max level reference signal out of the attached Instrument or Microphone this could be helpful.

I would also like to disable any peak hold timeout so I can check headroom on my recording after the take when working alone. While the take a musician wants to focus on the music, not on the mixing desk ;). A simple manual reset (by channel _and_ global, please!) is absolutely ok. I know most DAW can do that but when using the record to USB feature you simply have no DAW in use.

A maximum clipped frame count Display (per channel) would be luxury – it shows if clipping was just a small “accident” or if there was forgotten some PAD or a really badly adjusted Gain Control. When you are in a hurry, that may help setting priorities.

[DilettantParticipant]

According to desertcart, I would pay 3680$US for a QU16 delivered to CR. That’s about double the amount Thomann charges (before duty).

Importing a single product may need a lot of paper work. Someone has to do that and he will want to be payed for it. There may be heavy customs duties on that, too.

So, costs of several hundred $ for importing a single product basing on WTO Rules are not so completely unusual. And someone wants to earn money with that, too. It gets cheaper when you ex/import within some treaty agreement, for example between EU Countries or between NAFTA Cointries and so on.

Much of the paper war is the same if you import one or 10000 pieces even if the products differ a little (same duty class or such things). So a dealer who imports more frequently may be able to make a cheaper offer. But at the end of the day you cite nothing unrealistic.

BTW forget about freight costs. They nearly don’t matter at all for such things.

I just checked a few weeks ago: a 25 TEU (Twenty-Foot-Container-Unit) can be shipped from Singapore to Rotterdam harbour to harbour (which is some of the longest overseas delivery ranges on the planet) within 3-4 Weeks for about 4000$.

Such a Container can contain up to 25 tons of Goods, that is the payload of a Standard big 44t Truck in the EU (US Trucks may have a little more payload, don’t know). A _lot_ of Mixers do fit in there. So per Mixer, that part of the costs nearly won’t matter at all. In Germany, transport from Hamburg Port to Munich does cost several times more than from Singapore to Hamburg Port.

[DilettantParticipant]

I tried formatting with fat, fat32, vfat and different allocation sizes. Does _not_ help here.

[DilettantParticipant]

If what the OEMs did was strictly ‘legal’ as in 100.00000% conformance to all the usb standards, then the standard is at fault.

That is wrong by definition. A Standard is never fault, a Standard _defines_ what is right. It may be dysfunctional but then nobody can (and hopefully will) implement it.

So if something does not work like a Standard says, either one of the parts implementing the Standard _must_ be faulty or it is proven that the whole Standard is unimplementable. If you know something is not implementable, you may not sell it at all.

BTW accoring to t he Standard, any USB 3.0 device is also an USB2 Device. By definition. It _can_ do some things on USB3 ports only but it has to work on USB 2 ports as well. And since most tested USB3 devices work fine at Computers on USB2 Ports, it does not seem that they are broken about that. At least, not the big Mass. They may be too slow for your application, of course. But if i look at my USB3 SSD, we do not talk about “too slow”. We talk about “even recognition or formatting keeps hanging in some endless loop”.

Formatting my USB/NVME SSD (which also works fine on USB2 with computers) did not help, tried several variantes of VFAT and FAT and formatting in the desk. The Maximum i got out was that the Mixer starts to save a Show and then hat task keeps “working” forever – and after repowering or reconnecting, the storage is “checking” forever.

[DilettantParticipant]

Thomann or any other dealer outside CR won’t know much about importing regularities, duties and freight taxes to countries they don’t even have ship to (and there may be a reason why they decided not to do so).

Also i think A&H may try to help but won’t be able to do much here if there is no local dealer.

I see 2 Ways for you:

1) go to a local dealer that already has similar imported products in its portfolio and ask him to import one for you. He will at least know what to do about freight, duty, formalities and taxes and which logistics partner may do the job.

2) import one yourself. The right partners to ask then is an international active logistics company like UPS. They should be able to tell you what you need to know, at least whom you can ask. Maybe you will need a lawyer, too. Such things are not easy and not cheap.

Besides, you should also think about necessary technical adaptions: Power net voltage and sockets/cables, local laws about fire safety, electric security and so on may have to be checked if you don’t like to be subject to liabilities when something goes wrong. Such a Mixer keeps being an electrical device that sure can lead to severe health damage or fire if broken or handled wrong. So you should check about your obligations by law in the country you are using it.

[DilettantParticipant]

“yes in theory usb3 should work with usb2 ports but in practice it has many problems as AH users have found out.”

Since USB Users in the whole world use USB3 devices on USB2 Ports on billions of devices every day and almost none of them but AH Users ever have any Problem “in practice” with that, it is definitely not USB3 that has the Problems here – and it doesn’t even matter “who” has. It simply is likely of not working, that is what Users should know.

However, that was discussed enough in the Forum now i think. Anyone who is interested can find the Threads and even KeuthJ A&H said A&H cannot say surely if a specific USB Drive Model will work at all.

[DilettantParticipant]

Thank you, i think “Preamp settings” were blocked and that seems to overlap. But that makes sense. Maybe there could be some kind of Warning (Button Color in App/Touch Screen?) when overlapping scene filters are in “conflict” in the filter settings?

I also found the alternative to store patch/preamp settings in the Input Library. Will have to see which variant is better for me.

So: Problem solved!

[DilettantParticipant]

It went terribly wrong that although there were spent “hundreds of hours of developer time” it is obviously no more possible to keep up compatibility with really available devices.

Practically the whole Market of USB Storage Hosts out there managed to do that, A&H says officially “we can not”. They can’t even suggest a single reliable working actually available device. If you call that “done right” we better not ask what you would call “gotten wrong”.

Such a situation is a classical symptom when someone tries to self-implement complex things that are already widely standardized instead of using an already existing widespread standard implementation. According to KeithJ A&H the reason was “didn’t want the costs for integrating extra hardware” “some other consequences” which seem to be very special. Well, at least the cost argument is more than questionable after wasting hundreds of developer hours for tries to fix compatibility. It obviously from today’s sight was a bad design decision to do that like they did. However, such things happen in best families. Just they should not be repeated then.

USB 2.0 won’t help on the long run. That is a dead end, nobody will develop new devices for that. Even new Hosts (smartphones, notebooks, desktop PCs) massively tend to only have USB-C Connectors (mainly because they need less space and are easier to use for end users).

Since USB 3.0 officially and in most cases also practically keeps downward compatibility, there should be no problem with that at all. To be honest i know not a single other USB 2.0 host that reported massive Problems with USB3 devices despite some hard coded size limits when they only implemented FAT Filesystems.

So, SQ obviously has a Problem here.

That is _not_ because of “the way vendors implemented them” since their implementations seem to be perfectly legal in the sense of the USB Standards and work with almost any old USB2 Host out there. It is because A&H could or did not implement it “that way” and according to their statements also has made the SQ Hardware too unflexible to fix that specific Problem by rolling out new firmware.

However, when you have found a working device, it will work for you. Just if you often need to change that or need to buy new ones, you are doomed to do more excessive testing since the incompatibilities can even hit devices of same vendor and model.

[Author]

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