Feature Request – FX Sends That Follow Each Mix's Fader (Not Just Main LR)

CQ CQ Feature Suggestions
1

Hello Allen & Heath team,

I’ve been using the CQ-18T for a while now and there's lots to love about it – super portable, sounds great, and the wireless control is rock solid and perfectly suits my needs. But I’ve run into something with FX routing that’s caused headaches, especially when it comes to monitor mixes.

As you know, on the CQ line, FX sends are always post-fader and follow the Main LR fader, no matter what. The problem with this is that if I pull a channel down in the Main LR mix, the FX level drops too, even if that channel is still loud in a monitor mix.

I sometimes do my own mixing on stage while performing (no front-of-house engineer), so I rely on being able to hear the FX levels clearly in my monitor to know they’re set right. If the FX send is tied to the Main LR fader and that fader is down, I hear less (or zero) FX in my monitor, even if I have the dry signal at unity, which means I have no idea what the actual FX level sounds like in the Main LR mix, and no way to fix it on the fly.

I prefer to use pre-fader sends for my monitor outputs, but switching them to post-fader doesn’t help either. If I boost a channel that's lower in the Main LR mix, I still get too little FX coming through in the monitor.

I know I could work around this by using insert mode instead of shared, but I want to send multiple channels to the same FX, so that doesn’t work for me.

I also thought about boosting the FX level in the monitor mix to compensate, but since I’m using the same FX unit for multiple channels, that doesn’t help either. If one channel’s Main LR fader is low, there’s no way to independently turn up that channel’s FX level in the monitor without affecting everything else. Plus, that would mean continually adjusting the FX return in the monitor mix to match the dry signal levels, which just isn’t practical, especially during a live performance.

What I’d really love is if the FX send level could follow the fader in each output’s individual mix, not just Main LR. That way, the FX-to-dry balance would stay consistent in the monitor mix, in Main LR, wherever – even if the Main LR fader for that channel is pulled down. I know some higher-end mixers can do this, so it would be amazing if the CQ could support it too, even just as a toggle option for more flexible control.

If this could be added in a firmware update, it would make a huge difference for those of us doing live performances without a dedicated sound engineer, as well as others who have found this to be an issue (links below).

Thanks again – the CQ series is fantastic overall.

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Voted. I’ve run into this too. I don’t remember how but at one point I was trying to get FX through a monitor mix and no matter what I tried there was no effect coming out. At some point I discovered that it was being caused by either the channel itself being turned down in the mains or maybe I had the mains turned all the way down. I’m not sure which one of those it was but the FX level coming through the monitor was somehow tied to the signal going to the mains.

It would be great if I could completely separate this so the effects through the monitors had nothing to do with the channel’s level in the mains.

1 Like
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Thanks for the support. Don’t forget to press the vote button so hopefully this gets the attention it deserves. Seems a lot of people are having the same issue. If enough of us want the same thing maybe we’ll get it in the next firmware update :crossed_fingers:

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Copying my response from another thread:

I would also love more FX control options, especially a Pre-Fader send option. I was stumped during a sound check trying to figure out why none of my input sends were hitting the FX units. I eventually realized that the sends are Post-Fader, and cannot be changed to Pre-Fader. I like to use reverbs as shared units with Pre-Fader sends, I’m not a fan of Post-Fader sends or inserted reverbs.

Having the option to name and color FX units would be a huge help too, as they are the only channels I can’t customize the name/color of. If I am using multiple FX units, and just have the fader menu open, I have to remember which unit is which, what it is, and what is being sent to it.

I’ve been using my CQ-18t for 10 months now, and the lack of FX customizability has been the only negative of the console. Besides this, the console has been amazing for small gigs and performed wonderfully.

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The FX return channel needs to have the send turned up for the needed monitor mix, just like you would do on any input channel to send it to a monitor mix.

1 Like
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That is a really hard task, I believe.

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Has this not been done because of a hardware limitation or is it something that could be implemented easily via a firmware update?

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I could be wrong but I think it’s mostly routing, which should be achievable via a firmware update. The only hardware limitation I see is that there might not be enough FX processors if each output needed a separate processor to achieve truly independent mixes, but they could get around this by allowing us to assign shared FX channel to an individual mix.

Personally I only use 2 FX channels for reverb (which could even be reduced to 1) so I could have 2 channel used for my Main LR, and 2 used for my monitor mix and this would perfectly suit my needs.