Why can’t you route mixes to mains?
Because its a Mix not a Group.
A Mix has additional processing which adds intenal latency and lead to phase problems when mixed back to LR.
Many other consoles treat mixes as generic Busses that can either be utilized as an “Aux” send or “Sub group” with a GEQ rack you have to route and or insert. It’s very customizable being to switch from Effect engines to GEQ engines and inserting them on mixes and or channels. This adds flexibility but I understand it can be more costly to have that much more DSP, but why not add the function to treat the mixes as subgroups?
The only phase problems I would occur if I’m routing the original channels to the mains as well.
What additional processing do mixes have vs groups on the Qu32?
I thoroughly enjoy this console but this is my biggest gripe about it.
Indeed, Groups on the Qu have the same set of processing as Mixes (PEQ+GEQ+Compressor+Delay) plus Ducker (didn’t checked before writing, sorry).
Not providing Groups on Qu16 seems to be a pretty intended restriction to differentiate from the larger models.
Since we have the option to convert Groups to Mixes on the larger consoles, maybe there will be a firmware some time which allows to convert a (stereo) Mix into a Group.
Ben, what are you trying to accomplish by wanting to route a mix to the Mains rather than using a Group?
He’s on Qu16, no groups there (probably an intended limitation).
Andreas I do feel like it might be intended but I believe there are already enough incentive to get the Qu24 with the extra mixes, channels, ,matrixes and more.
V 1.8 Release Note
More Monitor Mixes – if you have a Qu-24, Qu-32 or Qu-Pac you can now change your Stereo Groups to Auxes. This means that Qu-32 and Qu-Pac can now deliver up to 11 monitor mixes (4 mono + 7 stereo), and Qu-24 offers up to 9 monitor mixes (4 mono + 5 stereo). Qu-16 doesn’t have Groups so we’re not able to offer this facility for Qu-16 users – sorry!
It sounds like they would like help the Qu16 users and it’s possible. If they can change Groups to Auxes why not vise versa. I see a lot of topics for Update suggestions that are nice bells and whistles but this would be something that greatly improves the workflow of the console. They added the update above because people wanted it. I believe they will update this as well.
You’re totally right, that this would be nice for Qu16 owners. But that request is rather old (this one is from 2013) and I’d expect this finally had been implemented with V1.8, if there’s a plan to do so. Maybe there’s a technical limitation why this can’t be added to the Qu16 (i.e. lack of spare physical routing path), but that’s just guessing.
If you only have to group faders (without addional processing, as we had old analogue days), a DCA may be sufficient enough.
Anyway: I really wish the Qu16 could switch Mix<->Group to stop this topic from reoccurring… 
Just checked Ruben’s FX workaround mentioned in that old thread, maybe that’s a way to “convert” a Mix on Qu16 into a Group using the FX path:
- Unassign your “grouped” channels from LR
- Setup your Group-Mix (i.e. Mix9-10) as required
- Select, for example, FX4 and feed it from your Mix9-10 (Backpanel: Mix->Return, input: Mix9-10)
- Sadly Empty Rack does not simply forward signal (that’ll be a great additional feature request) so you need to select some FX with minimum impact on your sound. I’ve picked “Phaser Manual” from the Modulators library and turned Mix Resonances to 0 which seems to produce a pretty dry signal.
- Done.
Thanks for your responses Andreas. The FX3 and FX4 routing would work but unfortunately those channels don’t pass signal unless there is an effect patched in the rack.
Is there any completely dry effects to insert to work around this?
The Phaser with Resonances set to 0 seems to be ok.
Just checked the impulse response, with resonance at zero it’s acustically ok but technically not yet flat. You addtionally need to set Offset to zero and Phasing and Resonating stages to their minimum settings. This will produce a rather identical signal on LR.
You’ll get a delay of about 2mSec, so don’t mix the grouped signal with the original.
Thanks. I’ll be putting that one in the library.
You’d have thought that ‘patch leads’ would be a low DSP effect to add
Thankyou.
So now, do we just need a blank ‘through Effect’ request added to the effects pages?
Even with only 16 FOH channels from stage, I have always used at least 2 groups. Instruments and vocals.
The days of the mix wizard supplied a left/right (inserted with EQ and Comp) and then that would combine for a mono send to FOH 
I somehow doubt A&H is willing to implement such an official “Thru FX” without getting rid of that mSec delay from that routing path (not sure if it would be possible at all).
Using that “flat” Phaser keeps the workaround-with-known-issues Status and reminds us to not mix that path with the original signal.
Well never say never
Maybe they could rename the ‘through Efx’ rename it and when used activates the routing page to pop up.
It is software driven. Not hardware.
…but Software runs on Hardware which can’t expand free in any direction. Real group functionality needs a zero delay or at least delay-compensated path from inputs through the group back to LR, maybe that required piece of hardware resource simply does not exist on Qu16.
Sure, never say never.
Maybe make it a pure delay FX, with a minimum value of 1msec - that would really remind us, but still allow for various useful groupings (e.g for things where you don’t run a second path, so the delay isn’t an issue)
I didn’t came close to flat using a Delay, basically since minimum Delay time is 5mSec.