I would like to bring up something that I have seen before here on the forum.
It would be excellent to be able to adjust the behavior of the DCA mute. The following description was the default behavior of my X32 and something we are definitely missing.
My typical festival workflow was to mute a DCA with all instrument inputs assigned, which would simply eliminate them in the mains. Inputs would remain active in the Aux (stage monitors) as the next group set up and we dialed-in their channels on-stage. Once the on-stage mixes were set we would then unmute the DCA, sending instrument inputs back to the mains before pulling the program music out of the mains. This ability really added a layer of professionalism and seamlessness to the transition.
The key is the program music. This needs to go to the mains the whole time, which means I cannot simply mute my mains directly.
With the SQ, I need to pull the DCA fader down rather than muting it. Seemingly an incidental difference, but the action is not assignable to a softkey shortcut, and not as precise as simply muting/unmuting.
In a previous forum post, a moderator mentioned that they would add a feature request to make the DCA mute follow the pre/post fader selection on a per-aux basis. If inputs were sent to an Aux pre-fader, then the DCA mute would not have an effect.
Alternatively, perhaps we could have the ability to configure each DCA such that the mute either affects ALL destinations for the assigned channels, or ONLY the Main LR send for assigned channels.
Either of these options would work for me, but perhaps there are other benefits/drawbacks to each I’m not thinking of.
I agree that having more mute options would be nice.
I have a potential work around, but I am not sure it works on the SQ series…
Are your sending your Main L/R mix to a matrix? On the SQ, can you send an input directly to a matrix? (I know you can on the Avantis and DLive, but I am not familiar enough with the SQ to know). If you can, then send your house music input directly to the matrix (not through the Main L/R) and also send the Main L/R mix to the same matrix. Now you can mute the main L/R mix while still getting your house music coming out of the speakers via the matrix. Unmute the Main L/R buss and it will also play out of the matrix to your speakers. You can also do this with any M/C mics, etc.
Your workaround can still work though. Would have to unassign house music (plus anything else needed) from LR and instead send to an unused Aux (probable best Post Fader for this scenario) or Group (not assigned to LR) and send that to to the FOH Matrix. Muting/unmuting LR would then leave the house music still playing.
The only downside is burning a valuable Aux/Group as we only have a total of 12 in any combination of Auxes or Groups.
The Hard/Soft DCA mute on Midas/Behringer is extremely useful and avoids these complicated workarounds. I’m really not sure why A&H haven’t implemented it on their products yet.
That stinks. I understand that Allen and Heath doesn’t want to make every feature available on every console, but then you run across stuff like this that greatly effects how well you can run a show and it is annoying there is a difference between models.