Allen & Heath QU-16 Digital Mixer Overview

hi studio spares I'm Alex Chan from audio technica the UK distributor for ellen hee we're here today to take a look at the cue 16 and to find a bit more information about the cue series thanks Alan Heath wanted to create a very simple and easy to use digital desk and they wanted people that are familiar with analog to be able to come to a digital desk and not be freaked out by lots of different menus etc they wanted it to be very much familiar to that sort of classic analog workflow so really good stepping stone for people wanting to go from an analogue set up into using a digital console but don't like the idea of lots of different sub menus etc to really get going think of this kind of like a digital mix was it really and I think that's one of the sort of real key features about it and it's that easy to use so as I said if they've designed it specifically to have that same kind of feel so for example the local connections which run the rear which you'll probably should see on a different image later the connections that are on the rear physically connect up pretty much sort of one-for-one across the 16 channels we've then got a sort of main control section on this super strip here which really is a one knob per function which we'll come to in more detail in a moment and then obviously we have our sixteen plus our master fader along the bottom here so these are motorized faders and my stress as well but as I said the signal path for the local connection really is analog connection one fader one and then we can easily select and focus shall I say this super strip by using the Select keys here quite easily so as I said really must stress the simplicity of this desk now it's not just local connections that you can work with I'll know with this desk you are able to work with three different types of sources so we can have a local connection on the rear maybe we're using a USB connection from a computer or a hard drive at the moment I'm doing a virtual soundcheck using the Alan Heath cue Drive which is just installed onto this desk and I can do 18 channels of audio which is our 16 channels and our stereo channel as well so it will let you do audio to and from the cue drive so again may you've got a theater production and you want to do a bit of an intro something you could do that from your da W if you've got the USB be connection on the rear or you can use the cue drive which is just a hard drive here this is one of the ones that's on the list of approved ones on their website and you can choose between either the USB B or the hard drive the Q drive should I say now C so you've got local and USB but also is compatible with the audio racks so we do than audio rack this one of them if you can see to the a B 16 8 which is the latest one and this really is a great little partner actually to the Q 16 so give me my 16 inputs and also eight outputs as well so I could easily use this for quite a small format gig or something like that all we do is connect up 120 meters of cat 5 if needed that's on max length put this on our stage and then we put this up front of house then you got very very powerful that a live set up or maybe again a lot of people because it will come to it in a bit a bit more information about the recording capabilities of this desk this could be a really nice little partner to doing some quite you know powerful recordings really and that will come to that and a little bit later on there are 16 local connections for our inputs coming into the desk now it really doesn't hold back on the outputs either so we do have a total of 10 mix outputs here as well now these are really really useful if you want to sort group music or channels or audio together to send out a separate processing but also when used in a live setup that's really really a lot of outputs for your monitors as an example we'll come to that in a moment really enjoy such the seeing the workflow there we've obviously got our main left/right XLR output and there's also three stereo inputs as well two on the rear left and right and then on the top of the unit which will show you the mode it's got a little 3.5 millimeter player or something directly into the desk maybe you have some playback between some audio between bands or acts etcetera now we do have some other quite interesting connections here as well now obviously with it being a digital mixer we've got a es output as well but very very importantly and I've mentioned already about working with the audio rack we do have the underneath the snake connection as well so this is where I can connect up my cat5 cable and then send that as I said maximum 120 meters to the stage or wherever it is that setup I mentioned the USB B port that is also on the rear but one of the most important features really I think about this desk is the network connection now this is a really really powerful feature because with the network connection you can easily hook up a dedicated Wi-Fi router and then using the free Q pad app on an iPad you can then easily take control of the console remotely which i think is really really useful when you're doing things like setting up monitors etc or maybe doing a headphone mix if you're working in a studio so we've seen a little bit about the input and output now we want to sort of find out how do we work with all these sources and how do we use this really powerful little desk now we focus as I mentioned already the Super strip here and the touchscreen as well which I must add by using these select keys here so let's say for example let's select channel one so we do is hit the Select that's now focused this now on our function key here should you should be able to see if I press that now we've got a very very simple screen which pops up now if I select all I'm going to click local and notice how they've all gone red that now is physically waiting for the local connection on the rear now as we mentioned maybe we've got a stage setup and we've got this a b16a audio rack our stage then we just simply press the snake now they've all gone yellow so now our inputs those 16 channels plus the stereo channels will be coming directly from our digital snake input we have our USB 9 now USB at the moment it's set to USB be streaming so that means when you've got a USB cable connected to our USB B port on the rear if we're using our favorite da W it will actually see that as a multi-channel sound card so it's actually 18 in an 18 out sound card built into this as standard so as I said maybe you've got an element of your band's performance like a string section or a synth section or a bed or something like that you can have easily that audio coming through the desk and then maybe mix up different sources alongside it now one way to sort of demonstrate that I think and of my deselect Lee's let's say on our first eight channels we've got local connections maybe we've got some wireless microphones so perhaps for our stage for example and then maybe we've got unknown a synth and some guitar cabs on stage maybe we will use a Dee snake so now they've gone yellow so I'm just using all a none button here and then maybe for the last channels we will set up to be cue drive or USB beats a nice overall do coming through here from my cue drive but notice how simple it was to set up my whole show quite easily just using this little screen here so said using the all button it can all be local or all be USB or we can easily mix between any of the above so local Dee snake or USB it really is your choice and what you want to do so very very easy to get going really with this con so as you can see now for the purpose of this demonstration I'll obviously just leave it with cue Drive so we can see some audio screen playback obviously we can't hear the audio we wanted to talk more about the features rather than necessarily showing you a mix in progress so that's getting our inputs assigned to the desk now for example now if we wanted to start sculpting our mix as we would as we all do as I keep saying you focus your channel using the Select and then we can do things like maybe a high-pass filter very very simple to engage all you do is press the in button and then we can control the amount using the encoder above it it's exactly the same with the parametric EQ so we engage it by pressing in and then we've got things like our gain our frequency and also maybe our cue amount as well so if you want to shape the cue of that band then that is possible there as well I must rest it because it does have a fully French touchscreen as well if I then press the parametric EQ on-screen now you can easily see exactly what you're doing and maybe you want to do a different type like maybe you want more of a shelf or something like that no problem you just use the screen and then you can use your encoder to change the setting of that type of EQ as well and again it's exactly saying you can adjust the frequency if people want to have a very much of visual feedback with the number or as I said it's one not per function so it's quite easily laid out to use this section only now that's our EQ and high passing so again quite useful ways of sculpting or sound next up and any of you that have done a lot of live and also in the studio you'll know the importance of having to use lots of additional processors as well to be able to start really controlling a lot of your sounds so underneath have thrown a hell of a lot of features into this desk so not only do we have a fully parametric EQ here we do also have a gate and compressor per input as well so that's a really really neat feature so for example we want to work the compressor now I think of my memory serves me correctly that channel 6 was bass just to using as an example just turn it up a little bit now we can see that there's a peak coming in here's our peak light is lit and on the compressor as well if you can see that speed is so important in a live setting especially working with larger PA so to engage that compressor all we need to do is turn it on and then turn our threshold down and it's compressing so our peak light is now gone from the compressor and we're compressing so it's very very simple one knob per function now obviously we wouldn't necessarily do it like that but I was just trying to demonstrate the the purpose of what when we want to see maybe when to engage a compressor now a lot of you will say well hold on there's a lot more to a compressor than just the threshold and I take control of it in much more detail obviously you know as I said speed is of the essence in a live setting you want it to just act and do what it needs to do when you activate it but now we're going to use the touchscreen I was on parametric here and I'll go to compressor we can now change different settings on our threshold in more detail ratio maybe we want to just a more of a simple ratio make up gain as well which can be adjusted there and again things like attack and release time there's also different flavors of it as well so say for example we want a slow opto compressor then that will be a little preset there for you as well so and again while we talk about presets using that function key again we have a library which you can either add to yourself or you there is a factory library as well which is quite useful again maybe you want to say write base base a as an example we recall it then that will click a preset directly onto that compressor setting it's a good starting point is on time so maybe you want to take in more detail from there but you know just again getting that workflow a lot quicker using a digital desk over say an analog set up the gate is exactly the same story now let's say Tom's if I remember rightly we're on this channel as you keep saying with remember if I remember rightly but one of the nice things about this desk is you can actually name your channels as well using that touchscreen so let's call this Tom's assuming that it is and maybe this one base so it's already known as a base one so it's easily recognizable what channel you're on so when you use the Select key it will quite clearly state at the top of the screen what channel we've selected so the moment we say we've got our Tom's on now what do you want to do to a Tom now I'll tweak you dip maybe a little bit of compression we probably want to gate it so we kind of cut out a lot of the sound of the other drums which may interfere with our signal so we really want them to cut through so again exactly the same way that that compresses a one knob per function we engage it by using in and we turn the threshold down to start gating now in exactly the same way that you use the compressor setting using the touchscreen you can then go into the gate setting using the such screen and adjust the things like depth maybe your attack time release time hold time all the important things that you would want to take control of with such a gate then that is possible to do that there so very very easy to work with it obviously as I said we it's dedicated one knob function so we do have a pan there as well also you can easily start getting your whole mix ready using that very very powerful strip so that's working with inputs now maybe next up we want to maybe add some effects to our mix so we want to make sure we can add a bit of space maybe some drums or you know overall ambience of our performance I must stress that the cue series have four very very powerful effects now the effects are straight from the iLife and also the GLD uses very similar effects so anyone familiar with those very very you know powerful consoles which this really borrows a lot of technology from we've got the four dedicated effects processors under their own dedicated page here so really simple clear laid out GUI and again we've got a library there so maybe someone says look I want just a bit of a delay let's say Kraftwerk delay that's one of my favorite lays on here and we click recall now we've loaded up our delay unit so very very simple to work with now I must stress that on the 2432 then you actually have four effects mixes but on the cue 16 you still have the four effects processes like it's larger relations but you have to use perhaps some of the mix outputs to get a dedicated mix out sorry different dedicated mix going before that but sometimes maybe you only need the to kind of mix selects ready for effects because maybe you're inserting effect now that being said say for example we've got a gated reverb so a effects for we've got a dedicated gate reverb which has already been set up for me if I go to the rear of the panel we can easily assign it as an insert and tell it to insert maybe on input two which is my snare click apply and engage the insert we've got a dry wet mount as well so you can really take control of that effect now that effect is inserted directly onto that particular input so that's a really really simple way to go to put that effect directly onto that channel now obviously if we're say for example we were working with a reverb now load up a different reverb just so you can see exactly what I mean so the SMR reverb spatial modeling reverb really really sounds great and it's one of my favorite reverbs I think the emt play is very very good quality now if I go back to that rear panel like a world just set up the insert now we want it to set up as a mix return on FX 1 we can comply so now when I press this mix sorry mix select on FX 1 we're now able to come away from our left/right mix which is our front of house got two effects one everything's down at the bottom so now if I say for example I wanted to put some reverb onto my snare I then just turn that fader up and in exactly the same way you'd not used to using an auxilary to send out to an effects you know it's exactly the same process but it uses the faders in particular so say for example snare maybe some cymbals maybe a little bit on the vocal or whatever and you can easily mix like that so that will then send the effect to the effects unit on our effects bus should I say and then that will then return if I go to my top layer here my left and right which I used to select using the Select key here you can see that my effects send and return is now coming back to the left right so I would hear that on the front of house so really really easy to work with effects with this unit okay so we've sculpted our sound we've maybe added some dynamics and we've also now applied some effects if it's anything used if it's being used in a live setup now perhaps we'd want to maybe start thinking about monitors so I've already mentioned how we can flick between the left right and also our effects mixes as well it's exactly the same here for our auxes or are mixed ten mixes here so if I go to mix one now let's say for example we've set up stage left center stage right and drum fill on our mixes we can easily then start sending out exactly the same way we would our left right mix or our effects if I press the mix one let's say the vocalist that stood at that position wants to hear maybe some kick drum a bit of snare maybe lots of vocal maybe some keys and maybe some other sounds here as well maybe the center wedge maybe that that's just this main singer and they just wanted you want to hear themselves because they're right in front of the drum kit they don't really need to hear a lot else and then maybe the keys players on stage right maybe they want a bit of kick bit of snare quite a lot of bass and a bit of main vocal as an example so we've easily set up for independent mixes or say three now four and we can flick between them which i think is a really really simple way of working with monitors and also getting a monitor mix right one of the things I would stress is when you're using the either free cue app which comes on it for the iPad you can also take control of that as well yourself so if you're using maybe this in a studio set up to feed a headphone amp or something like that you can then connect to the Wi-Fi router you connect on the rear and then you can easily take control of that mix as well same for left and right sometimes you turn up to do a gig and you haven't got the luxury of a front of house really you know slap-bang in the middle of the stage but you can walk around maybe the crowd area to sort of really get the mix right so that's a really really cool feature about that next up with our outputs and I've mentioned a lot about the inputs and the processing that comes in now on our outputs one of the things I will stress every single output has a parametric EQ a graphic and a compressor as well so not only is it got a gate compressor parametric etc and a fully recalled preamp coming on the input on the output we've also got some really useful processing as well now again the purpose of that and then we were talking monitors let's talk about graphic EQ now I've just pushed the on screen touch screen so to bring up the the GUI really for the graphic now if I press this fader flip button here for the g eq that now takes me into my graphic mode now if I press it again it'll go up another stage and I press it again it goes back to our mix so let's say for example what what do we want to do with monitors what we want to wring out sort all the resonant frequencies out that may causes feedback in the live setup so we select the mix using the mix one press the fader flip we can then use these faders as dead kated you can see the screen changing here you can now start to actually wring out your monitors using that now obviously the 24 and the 32 have larger and more faders so they have a little bit more option therefore being able to take control so with the cue 16 it is staged what I like about it though it does overlap quite well because as we all know there's always going to be that one problem frequency instead of going through several different pages it will kind of overlap so you can kind of see exactly where you're working with now one of my pet hates and I'm sure a lot of yours are as well is when you see something as hideous as that but we want to reset it we want to get back to where we are we can easily just use the Select keys and then that will reset my fader back to its kind of zero position for the graphic I'll add so that's a really really quick way of getting going with that now again maybe we want to be a little bit more clinical so let's come out of the graphic EQ and we'll come to our parametric EQ so again we can use that one not a function kind of thought process here and easily sculpt our mix as well again same thing with a compressor maybe we're using one of these dedicated mix outputs for a set of in ear monitors perhaps we can put a limiter straight on that to protect the artists hearing so we make sure it really doesn't exceed a certain level and maybe a lot of people do often say that they you know want a little bit more sort of low end or something you can enhance that using the parametric for example as well so very very powerful console in such a small format desk so we talked a little bit about now input and the outputs and the effects some of the really kind of neat features which I like about this which is the under the hood sort setting if you like now we've talked mainly about just getting things going now if we go into our custom layer now I press to both my layer and my sort of bottom layer buttons here and now gone into this amber light so that means under my custom layer I can now assign this to do absolutely anything I want so this few different thing ways to work with this now I use two examples say for example this venue is used in a venue and on a Friday and Saturday night it's a music venue so you want to have all the features of the desk and you've got an in-house engineer but maybe Monday to Friday it's a comedy so Monday to Thursday shows a it's a comedy venue as an example and all they going to need to do is have a little bit of audio playback from a media player and maybe just a microphone but there's not going to be an engineer there so we can use some of the features of the cue 16 to really be able to make sure that that desk is protected and your system is protected so let's assign that so under the setup page under control I can then select my custom layer so let's say for example channel 1 will be my local connection which is connected a wireless mic or wired microphone or whatever connected on my physical local channel 1 next up on channel 2 I don't want that to be channel 2 on the back I want that to be my three point five mil input here so if a performer turns up with a media player they can connect that easily on the 3.5 jack straight into here and then they'll have that channel dedicated for the level of that so I just use the encoder underneath the touch screen here and find stereo 3 so now all these other fighters do nothing and until you assign them to do something so for example now you know that that's the volume for your mic and that's the volume for your media player it really is that simple to make that custom layer do anything you want now there won't be any point in doing all this unless you could save it now we can have up to a hundred different scenes saved within this desk now seems a really nice way to take a snapshot of the mixer so say for example you're working as I just mentioned with that a venue you could maybe save it as a bar set up one or something like that you can then set different pass codes on that as well so actually you can make that as a very basic level of use so you can also make safe like your input routing your mix routing and also things that you don't want to filter or you maybe want filtered so for example we don't want the input patch changing or maybe we don't want our mix ends changing you can easily use the block button and block out certain functionality so for example if you're the owner of the company or you're the engineer that uses it you have full admin rights you can do whatever you want within that scene but maybe you've got another customer or a user that's a bit more of a basic user you don't want them to get into any mischief or get themselves to a situation they're not sure what they've done then you can easily lock that using the scene so really really powerful set up for such as again small format desk and obviously it's the same I must stress the operating system and the workflows the same on that 16 to 24 and 32 now going back to our setup for our customer now I've already mentioned that this desk does actually have an inbuilt sound card so maybe it can be using the studio setup now one of things I absolutely love about this is it right now scroll all the way to MIDI I use the function key here to easily set up MIDI by and that just basically copies the last setting so he's on channel 1 at me channel 2 3 4 5 or if it's MIDI it will make all the channels MIDI so now we've set up this is now a fully fledged MIDI controller so for example saying you use this desk in a live environment to mix your band but actually back at your studio you're using the multi-channel sound cob which is built-in it's giving me my 18 in an 18 out sound card but also we then want to take control of our maybe our favorite da W it will also there's a free app available on the al-anon Heath website which is will give you basically either Huey or Mackie control emulation so we'll work with Pro Tools that will work with Ableton and logic etc so really really neat feature again and just giving even more to this very very simp act powerful package and again all of this information can be saved under your scene data as well while we're in setup arms going to quickly mention this as well we've also got four dedicated soft keys now we've obviously got more on 2432 okay so while we're on the setup page I'd like to talk a little bit more about the soft key so we've seen how we can set up our custom layer to do it all matter of things from any kind of channel or maybe to be a MIDI controller so under the soft keys maybe we want to assign our soft keys to be things like a mute group or something like that we can easily assign that to do that now notice this one's blinking now if I look on number two it says it's the tap tempo left and right for effects too so if I go back to my effects page and let's say effects 3 we want to assign to be soft key 1 just sake of argument so this got a lot faster tap time already for some reason in there so wherever the last demo was with this so now let's go back to our setup page and click on soft key and soft key one instead of within mute group I'm going to say tap tempo left and right and I'll tell it effects number three click apply now suddenly that's going very very quickly which corresponds to what's going on on the actual user interface there as well so now we've just done a tap tempo and that then corresponds on screen it really is that simple to work so under setup as well this is where we do all kind of things as well like when we set up our connection to the network using the Wi-Fi router and also things such as our output patching as well and how things will work and also a monitor output as well so I must stress the cue series like the jail the end the I live is compatible with the underneath me one system as well so again if it's gone into maybe a house of worship or again a studio or maybe a live sound setup where they don't have a monitor engineer that really is a cool feature to be able to have 40 channels of audio coming straight down my cat 5 cable to our stage box and then maybe daisy chain it off from that so it's a very very very powerful system again for such a small little format desk we've also gotten this one the later firmware updates has given us MMC control as well so remember like I mentioned already about doing our MIDI setup maybe we can assign our soft keys to do things like stop play and record as an example so with our fury or Mackey emulation more easily able to take control of our da W in our custom layer and then we can also maybe do some transport controls as well using our soft key so very very powerful little setup we've obviously talked a little bit about now the MMC and setting that up as well now one of the things I think it's a really really cool thing about using this desk specifically for recording is the fact that when you're using that multi-channel sound card to record directly into your da W you can also use the cue Drive to record audio directly to the drive at the same time so actually gives you back up recording redundancy as well so say for example goodness forbid you know your laptop gets some beer or something spill on it in a in a in a live setup stranger things have happened I'm sure if you have this cue Drive Safely underneath the desk then perhaps that will still record our 18 channels of broadcast 48k wave as well so it gives you a really nice bit of peace of mind working with the two different types of recordings or options with this desk and that's the same across the cue 16 the 24 and the 32 I keep saying it they're very very similar the 16 or 24 32 with the 24 we've got four group outputs but also dedicated matrix output as well so if you wanted to maybe work with delay towers on a larger gig or something like that the 32 which is the most recent one so one of the more recent cues that one will give you the for group outputs but also will give you 2 matrix outs as well and our larger screen and more recently in the most recent to be announced is the cue pack now that one very much has this sort of a lot of the functionality but it doesn't have the faders so it's still a 19-inch rack format but it's a really really nice little product for using an in store somewhere where you can use maybe the iPad for mixing on it for more information about the q16 and also to find out more information about the other desks in future videos then visit the link beneath the video about this to keep up to date with the latest information from studio spares I just like to stress this is $17.99 recommended retail price and again keep up today by the studio space web sites for more info thank you

Channel: Studiospares

Views: 208,427

Keywords: Allen & Heath, QU-16, Digital Mixer, Digital Mixing Console, Audio

Id: qE97HbLWO8o

Length: 30min 59sec (1859 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2015