[GR-PDXParticipant]

This is wandering a bit off-topic, but…

I work for a software company. I’m a designer and usability expert there. Several years ago, we adopted an Agile development process…which is fine for the development side of things, but sucks for design and for ensuring that a holistic user experience is intentionally delivered.

One of the side effects of Agile is that things are often released incomplete. “Good enough” is the mantra. The features lacking in the Qu-16 smack a little of that side effect to me.

One thing that we strive to do at our company is to reassure users with some kind of timeline for promised features. I’ve heard that suggested here, too. Nobody is saying the board isn’t great. There is always room for improvement, though. And as GCumbee states, there are some fairly basic features that have not yet been implemented. If the prioritization process at A&H resembles that at my company, I would guess that some of these features were deemed “useful to 10% of users” only, and even if they are high priority for that 10%, getting the thing on the market quickly was higher priority still.

I have to say this, and I’m not trying to snipe: I have the Qu-16 on a 45-day trial. I have been struggling with whether to get this or a (gulp) Behringer product. My guess is Behringer is not yet delivering on all their promises, but they seem more “feature complete” right now in some ways. And they seem more scalable. Were it not for those factors and the above-described oversights in implementation on the Qu-16, my choice would be clearly in favor of supporting A&H. I hope I don’t have to send my board back to exchange for an x32.

[GR-PDXParticipant]

Thanks, GuitarHero. I read that in the manual and somehow hadn’t mapped the “on” with the “assign.” Maybe if they’d abbreviated to the first three letters of “assign” on the iPad app. 😉

[GR-PDXParticipant]

This also seems like it would fall under the category of “low-hanging fruit” for them. Relatively little investment in code would be a substantial delight for end users.

This coupled with the ability to group channels on a fader, at least for the iPad app, then “blow the group up if needed” would make the custom layers on the iPad particularly useful. Picture wandering around the house with the drums all on one fader, BGV’s on another, and adjusting the levels as you move. If you need to bring up the snare, just temporarily blow that group up, adjust the snare, and collapse the group again. But without names, yeah… that’s putting a lot of unnecessary cognitive load on the user. And yes, I do have magnetic tags for the hardware scribble strip.

[GR-PDXParticipant]

Okay, I think I get it. So “On” means it’s on for whatever mix is selected at the time (L/R, FX*, or Mix*). Mute is a global control across all mixes.

But where is the corresponding control for the board itself?

[GR-PDXParticipant]

…oh, and to be able to also color-code things in at least the app. The at-a-glance usability of color coded sections is really nice. For example, a future version of this console might include an RGB LED under the fader slot, so you could control the color there. This would be particularly useful if you could group channels.

[GR-PDXParticipant]

I don’t necessarily think it is a necessity, but I would prioritize it pretty high, particularly given the utility of it in the iPad app and the fact that it seems like every competitor out there has it. This seems like it would be a fairly trivial thing to implement in the software. (He says, knowing full well that he often experiences the ‘How hard could it be?’ discussion with his own managers in software)

[GR-PDXParticipant]

I agree. This would also be useful for soundchecks; you could get a better idea of not only that an adjustment needs to be made on a given channel, but what kind and how much of an adjustment should be made.

[GR-PDXParticipant]

I agree. It clearly seems like this is not possible on the mixer hardware, but on the touchpad display and the iPad app, this should happen. It would have been VERY nice to eliminate the scribble strip and put a set of LCD displays there to allow this, too.

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