Hello Allen & Heath team,
I recently purchased an SQ5+ and was surprised to discover that there currently seems to be no way to create or edit an SQ5+ show file offline.
On previous Allen & Heath consoles, as well as many competing platforms, offline preparation is a fundamental part of the workflow. Engineers often build their entire show in advance, including channel names, routing, mixes, DCAs, FX, soft keys, and scenes before arriving at the venue.
I installed MixPad+ expecting to prepare my SQ5+ show offline, but the application does not appear to offer an SQ5+ offline mode. The only demo console shown is the SQ7+, which does not help SQ5+ users who need to create and save files for their own console.
This is especially surprising considering the SQ5+ is a brand-new professional console aimed at live sound engineers who frequently prepare shows before an event.
Am I missing something, or is offline show creation for the SQ5+ currently unavailable?
If it is not yet supported, can Allen & Heath share whether this feature is planned for a future update?
Thank you.
Sounds like the Mixpad app is working the same way it was for the regular SQ.
Opening it in Offline mode, it would state SQ7 in the top corner, but you can still edit a show that will work on the SQ5.
If you aren’t starting completely from scratch in this instance, you could just connect the app to the console, and pull the showfile over and save it, then work on that offline.
In contrast, it appears also to me that the MixPad offline functionality was either forgotten or cut on the SQ+ (see comparison images of the SQ- vs. SQ+).
And why does that red border on the SQ+ MixPad unnecessarily reduce the available space?
There is no problem using the “SQ7 mode” to prepare a file that is going to be used on a SQ5. Just don’t program the “extra” resources (faders, softkeys, local I/O, etc) that the SQ7 over the SQ5. If you do program those “extra” resources, the file will still work on the SQ5, it is just going to ignore the “extra” stuff. So if you program all 32 faders on the SQ7 offline editor and load that file on a SQ5, only the first 16 faders are going to be displayed (because the SQ5 only has 16 faders). Faders 17-32 will simply be ignored, but it won’t cause any errors or incompatibility issues.