I followed the up-dated manual instructions for implementing the newly added Mute groups. Apparently I must have missed a critical step in the process because they did not respond properly. I have not had mute group troubles of this sort with the other consoles I work with: could there possibably be a bug in the new firmware?
Hugh
Hi Hugh,
Can you describe what didn’t work properly, please?
I have loaned my CQ20b to a small church for implementing two different mixes: One for the limited SR needs for a 140 seat venue and the most important mix is for the live stream of the service with all 9 inputs becoming very important. The choir and electric Yamaha piano speaker need no amplification but the spoken word and musical solos do well with a simple mono mix to output #1. The main LR mix is deployed for the internet streaming.
(this is when I discovered the only way to create isolated separate mixes was to globally assign a Pre Fader setting)
(Inputs deployed; 4 wireless and 5 line fed condensers for a total of 9 channels)
The 4 mute groups fit very well with managing the flow of the service. However after carefully assigning the channel On/Off designations for various segements of the service to my great surprise when selecting one of the buttons the expected channel alignment did not respond. There is a possibility that activation of the groups are needed but that is incorporated in the DCA chapter that I certainly do not need given the fact that I am deploying only 9 inputs.
Truth told the church does not need to deploy mute groups to manage the two mixes however they would make mixing a lot easier for the regular crew that is trying to learn a new system.Tthe church has plans to purchase their own CQ20b if it will deliver better audio than the QSC single mix system they have been working with.
Hugh
Mute groups don’t need to be specially activated.
The two steps are:
Assign your channels to a mute group. Note that each channel can only exist in one mute group on CQ - if you assign it to another one, it’ll unassign from the first one.
Then, assign a softkey to control that mute group, OR use the control on the Faders → MGrp/DCA page OR assign a custom fader strip to Mute Groups.
I wonder if you’d accidentally unassigned channels from one group by adding them to another?
Hi Hugh.
Take note of MarkF’s last comment. Took me a while to realise that a channel can only be in one mute group at a time. That makes sense when you think about it (imagine the confusion/clashes) but it does mean that when you add a channel to a certain mute group, it is automatically removed from any other that was previously in.
Ways around it involve using DCAs and muting those. Or investigate Mixing Station which has more sophisticated virtual DCAs (iDCA I think they call them) which could help you but needs some learning.
I use the 20b only for small solo shows: my primary console, a LV1 classic, has no problem allowing pretty much any function I desire including enough CPU power to trigger multiple functions such as the subject mute groupings. I had a hunch the DCAs were in play to facilitate the chore I needed but I was hopeful that was not the case. I will leave it up to the regular church SR guys to decide if they want to use DCAs to facilitate the needed mute groupings.
I am delighted with the 20b and certainly understand the reasons behind it’s obvious limitations.
Hugh
It’s not that difficult at all actually. The text representation would be this I think (just spit-balling here so if this isn’t 100% correct it is very close)…
(Channel Strip Mute) AND ((Mute Group 1) OR (Mute Group 2) OR (Mute Group 3) OR (Mute Group 4))
Mute Group X implies that that item, let’s say Channel 1, is set to be muted for that group and that group is currently activated (for that to become a “true”…if the group is not activated OR Channel 1 is not part of that group then it is “false”).
The net effect is that if the channel strip mute button is activated, the channel is muted. If not, if any of the activated group mutes have that channel in it, then it is muted. Otherwise, it is not.
You might be able to come up with an edge case where this doesn’t work (again, just spit-balling here) but this would work much better than the current (very bad IMHO) implementation. A&H is the only software I know of that works this way (I have used Mackie, QSC, Behringer, and SoundCraft…maybe one or two less known ones too). I have a feeling they shrugged their shoulders a little too early on this issue.
BTW, I was one of the first people to make a Mute Groups feature request in the forum…since I used them on several other platforms (implemented the correct way) previously. I was glad that they added them. I was disappointed in the implementation. They are slightly better than nothing IMHO.