I work with a band where I would like to use the Saturator on the drum overheads. So far, so good. Unfortunately, I cannot simply configure the overheads as a stereo channel and insert the UFX Rack, because the two microphones are arranged as an A/B spaced pair and require different gain settings. As far as I’m aware, the SQ(+) does not allow independent gain settings for the left and right sides of a stereo channel.
This would not be a problem if it were possible to patch two ganged mono channels into the Saturator, but unfortunately this is currently not supported, even though the UFX Rack itself is capable of processing two channels.
In this particular case, one workaround would be to insert the Saturator on the drum group. However, I only want the saturation to affect the overheads, not the entire drum group.
It would therefore be great to have the option of setting the gain independently for each side of a stereo channel. This would also be beneficial when using older or lower quality synthesizers and keyboards that have slightly different output levels.
One possible implementation could be a toggle button in the Preamp window that enables or disables independent gain staging for stereo channels. When enabled, two separate gain controls could be displayed in the Socket Preamp section.
Just Gang them instead of stereo pairing them and they retain their own gain settings.
2 Likes
Yes, but then I cannot patch them into a single Saturator instance, as I mentioned. I would have to use two UFX Rack slots just for the overheads, and dialing in the two channels would be cumbersome because I would constantly have to switch between rack units to adjust them individually.
Being able to enable or disable independent gain staging for stereo channels with a simple toggle would solve this issue.
1 Like
There is a less than ideal workaround to the linked gain on a stereo channel problem. If you go to the IO Patch screen and select Inputs, you will see your preamps along the top row of the matrix. If you select the preamp on either side of your stereo pair, you can adjust it individually from this pop up without affecting its pair.
The downside of this is that as soon as you touch the gain control on your stereo channel they will both go to the same new value. It’s not ideal, but this workaround will get you out of a tight spot when you have mismatched gains on a quick festival changeover. This works better on the dLive where you have the “remove preamp from surface” option on a per channel basis. I don’t think that option exists on SQ but correct me if I’m wrong.
There is a similar feature to prevent accidental changes to gain controls.
However, it only works globally.
1 Like
