I bought the CQ18t in the hope I could use some stock midicontroller incl. footcontroller to add some haptic controls for control volume, fx send or panning with simple CC channel messages on stage (keyboard, drum submixer, …). I know I could and have to use a midihost where I connect my midi device and send/receive messages to the CQ18T. However, none of existing hardware midi host boxes allows mapping (CC channel to Allen & Heath NRPN MSB/LSB) in a way, that I could use it to even control simple volume fader. I know there is a ‘A&H Midi control app’ for win/mac that does the translation, but this is not something for simple and reliable live stage scenarios and connections.
Use-case :
Use simple external midicontroller together with simple 1:1 midi host box to have haptic control of most important mixer settings in live scenarios without computer/app on Windows/Mac
Feature request:
Provide ‘LIVE-MODE’ for midi translation (e.g. whats in A&H Midi App) that allows simple external midi controller to control most of the mixer settings with simple CC channel values
As you noted, you need some sort of “midi bridge” between your console and the mid devices to translate the data between the two different protocols/systems.
There are potentially many different options, but three stick out in my mind.
Use the third party app “Mixing Station”. This is still a software solution (like the A&H Midi App) that has to be running on a hardware device, but that hardware device can be a computer, a tablet, or even a mobile phone. You just need to be able to plug in the Midi device into it via USB. I have used this setup to add a motorized Midi fader controller running off an Android tablet very successfully. The advantage to this solution is that it is extremely inexpensive (just the cost of the MS license) to implement, but the disadvantage is the fact that it is a software solution that must be “running” for the Midi devices to communicate with the console.
Bome Box is a hardware solution that you can purchase that acts as this “translator”. Once it is properly programmed, it basically is a “plug and play” device that does not require any attention. Just plug it into the console and the Midi devices into it and it should just work. The advantage here is the “plug and play” simplicity of the system, but the disadvantage is the cost of the Bome Box.
A member of this forum @frenchie has been developing his own hardware solution. He has been documenting his process and I believe he has released his programming if you wanted to try to duplicate it. You can get more information about it here. DIY external midi controller for the CQ
I have multiple midi solution that speaks NRPN midi to the A&H mixers.
Some are detailed here in this forum (check the link given above) and some are available in thingiverse, all DIY solution.
There are cheap Midi Host doing 1:1 mapping (CME, Behringer, …) unfortunately not able to do proprietary mapping of CQ mixers, so I even could not use any of my midi device incl. a synthesizer with all of it’s controllers to do simple sound/volume control. Yes, something like ‘Bome Box’ is the way musicians like me like to go for plug & play, with everything that’s available on stage - wasn’t this the idea of ‘Midi’? Yes, i know, with Arduino (doing lots of stuff myself with microcontroller),…you can do all this stuff, it ends up to be even more proprietary. This is the forum for feature requests, and CQ is basically a mixer for small live stages, so I put a request here. And yes, this is a feature from a musician and all the DIYs listed too are done because of musicians interest too (?). My hope is A & H is able to just put some simple Midi mapper functionality that you can switch to live stages and by this react on musicians requests
I get it and you are not “wrong” for making this request. It was never my intent to “nullify” your request. The more people that ask/vote for this, the more likely A&H is going to be to implement it.
That being said, we posted solutions that work right now because it will be a considerable amount of time before this request would be implemented on the CQ (assuming A&H even wants to implement it - something I cannot speak to). That is because the level of MIDI support that would be required to make this work is not currently available on any A&H console lineup.
This means even if A&H decided they wanted to add full MIDI functionality to their consoles, it would be released for the DLive first (being the “flagship” lineup for A&H). It would likely be released for the Avantis sometime after that. Once that happened, these changes would then slowly work their way down the rest of the A&H lineup - first to the SQ, then the QU, and finally to the CQ lineup. Of course this is assuming every device in the A&H lineup could support this change. Odds are at some point, the available hardware on a particular console line might not be able to support the added programming that would be required to implement these changes. Given that the CQ console has the least amount of hardware processing available, there is always a chance the device couldn’t support the added programming required.
In the meantime, there are possible solutions available today. Whether you want to explore those options is completely up to you.
Actually I am more a singer than a musician.
But I love electronic and midi.
The device that would fit the most your need is the convertor based on a Teensy 4.1.
Your midi controller, synth or whatever you have that send midi, and the CQ mixer are plug into this Teensy convertor and the Teensy itself is plugged to a PC for programming via the dedicated GUI (web HTML).
Once programmed, it can run standalone.
In the GUI, every midi input of your own synth or midi device (up to 32 different) can be affected to a CQ control via a “Listen function” and a drop down menu, very easy.
