I have a CQ20B but haven’t had it out in the field yet. I’ve only played with it in the shop. I can say that the SQ, Avantis, and dLive all sound fantastic, and there *is* a difference in sound between them and Qu and GLD (which I also have). Since the CQ is based on the same architecture, I am guessing that it should sound about the same as the SQ, Avantis, and dLive other than the preamp differences.
I have also compared Qu-Pac and the UI24R, using them both on a gig at the some location, and using the same speaker system, and the Qu-Pac sounds better IMO, with an overall warmer sound, whereas the UI was a bit “brittle” sounding for my personal likes. The UI24R sounds very similar to the X-Air. The Qu-Pac is basically the SB with a screen, some buttons, and a few other extras.
Based on my past experience with the other A&H 96K products, I would personally choose the CQ, unless you needed the added expandability of bus architecture (groups, DCAs, matrix, etc) and channel counts of the SB. Personally I don’t like mixing anything more than 16 channels on a tablet. With higher channel counts, I would much rather be on a physical console.
I am hoping to get the CQ out on a gig over the next few weeks. Based on what others have said already, I am confident that it is a great sounding mixer.
