Newbie Help with QU 16

Qu Qu Troubleshooting
1

Hi all, complete newbie here. I’ve been scouring the Internet looking for places where I might be able to ask a super basic question. Apologies if this isn’t a good place to ask. Feel free to redirect me.

I’m a drummer in a cover band. We play very basic gigs with a simple mixer. I have never mic’ed my drums, and I’ve never used in-ear monitors or anything, we just have a wedge (which is awful for me). We never have a sound person, so sound is often an adventure. We are looking to up our sound game a bit, and have invested in a better board, an Allen and Heath QU-16.

I am trying out a set of in-ear monitors as well, and this is where my question comes in. To make the in-ear monitors work, I have a little Mackie Mix 5 board. So, I am getting an XLR out from the QU-16 that goes into the Mackie Mix 5. The out is unique for me, so in theory I can ask for more vocals in my monitor and we can accommodate that without impacting anything else. My in-ears get an out from the Mackie Mix 5 board, so I can control the volume level myself using the Mackie.

We had tried a simple version of this setup the week before with our old board and just vocals, and it worked fine. I could hear the vocals very well in the in-ear monitors. So I’m confident that my in-ears work, the Mackie board works, and the concept works.

Last night we were playing around with the new board for the first time, and it . . . wasn’t successful. This time we had a guitar and several mics running through the board. But for some reason, in my in-ears, all I could hear was the guitar. It’s not that the guitar was overpowering the vocals; none of the three vocal mics came through at all.

As I mentioned, I’m a total newbie to things sound-related, but this situation is confusing to me. As I understand it, I’m getting a single line out from the QU-16 that should contain the entire mix, which included 3 vocal mics plus the one guitar. So, it doesn’t make sense to me why/how I could be getting the guitar, but not any of the vocal mics, and I’m a bit stumped as to what to try. It doesn’t seem like it could be a cable issue, because if the cable were bad I just wouldn’t get anything, not that I would get guitar but not mics.

Any thoughts on how we could troubleshoot this, or if this is not a good place for something like this, any thoughts on where I could go ask?

Any advice gratefully welcomed. We don’t practice again until Thursday, but I’d love to have some ideas in mind when I go next time.

Thanks so much!

2

So it sounds like your using your small Mackie mixer as a headphone amp
to drive your in ear monitors, no problem there.

What output on the mixer are you plugging into?
It should be one of the aux/mix outs.

Lets say it is aux mix 1, pressing the blue mix 1 button on the right side of mixer
will put all the faders in send on fade mode for mix 1, they are now what was the aux
knob on your analog mixer, the master level is the far right hand fader same as what is
used for the mains master level.
Now turning up or down any of the channel faders will turn up or down the input associated with the fader in mix 1 monitors.
Hitting the green select button on the master fader and selecting the processing menu top button next to the screen will let you adjust EQ and limiting on the mix or you can
use the EQ bank of controls.
Hitting the green SEL button on any channel lets you adjust the processing on that selected channel.

You will more than likely want the monitor mix to be PRE fade…after you have selected mix 1 go to the left hand side middle and hold down the PRE button, now any channel that is assigned to be pre fade the green SEL button will be lit up, if they are not keep holding the PRE button and hit the SEL channel button to turn it on.

Now let off the PRE button and hold the ASSIGN button, all of the green SEL buttons should light up, if they don’t keep holding the ASSIGN button and hit the SEL buttons that are not lit up, doing that assigns the channel to be able to send to the selected mix.

There are a couple more ways to do these same things but that is the quickest way to what should get your monitors up and running.

Also after adjusting the monitors remember to switch back to the main LR mix mode!!!

3

If you were using a different board, do you mean in place of the QU-16? If so, it might not be equipped to deliver different monitor mixes.

The QU-16 is perfect for this. It’s easy to configure the mix you want and you can control it either on the mixer itself, or using an app on your phone/tablet.

The Mackie mixer you are using for your personal monitoring is perfect and in fact. many drummers use similar small mixers.

If it was fine with the QU-16, the problems you are experiencing are almost 100% down to the new board. what facilities it has and how the monitoring is set up.

4

Hello @steve.battisti,

Just to complement the explanation that Mike provided above.

I would recommend to first ensure we have a good gain structure on your channels. Best practice would be to have your fader in unity (0dBs) and start adjusting the gain until you reach a good level of your source.

Under the assumption that you L&R outputs of the QU16 are going to the FOH; We would need to analyse what XLR Output are you using to connect from the QU-16 to your Mackie. As Output Buses and Output sockets are fixed and labelled at the rear of the mixer, this will be very easy to identify.
Whichever this Mix is, press the blue button of it and as Mike explained, your faders will now be the send to that Mix (Make sure that the Master Fader is also in Unity 0dBs, at this moment the Master Fader is the Master of that Mix you are in)
At this point, raising the fader of any of your incoming sources should be feeding signal into the Mix and therefore, you should be receiving this signal in your Mackie mixer and your Headphones.
Adjust the levels accordingly among all your sources to create a Mix that you are comfortable with, your Mackie level will only control the level of the overall mix, but to make an adjustment of a particular channel you would need to do it directly on the Mix at the Qu-16.

Here’s a quick video to get you familiarized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9P-Om8UBe4&list=PLq3_zC_Xz0PjdM-aethdufOFUMhQgNBpo&index=9&t=154s

Let us know how it goes!
Rafael

5

If it was fine with the QU-16, the problems you are experiencing are almost 100% down to the new board. what facilities it has and how the monitoring is set up.

Sorry for the confusion. It worked fine with the OLD board, doesn’t work with the QU-16.

6
So it sounds like your using your small Mackie mixer as a headphone amp to drive your in ear monitors, no problem there.

What output on the mixer are you plugging into?
It should be one of the aux/mix outs.

Lets say it is aux mix 1, pressing the blue mix 1 button on the right side of mixer
will put all the faders in send on fade mode for mix 1, they are now what was the aux
knob on your analog mixer, the master level is the far right hand fader same as what is
used for the mains master level.
Now turning up or down any of the channel faders will turn up or down the input associated with the fader in mix 1 monitors.
Hitting the green select button on the master fader and selecting the processing menu top button next to the screen will let you adjust EQ and limiting on the mix or you can
use the EQ bank of controls.
Hitting the green SEL button on any channel lets you adjust the processing on that selected channel.

You will more than likely want the monitor mix to be PRE fade….after you have selected mix 1 go to the left hand side middle and hold down the PRE button, now any channel that is assigned to be pre fade the green SEL button will be lit up, if they are not keep holding the PRE button and hit the SEL channel button to turn it on.

Now let off the PRE button and hold the ASSIGN button, all of the green SEL buttons should light up, if they don’t keep holding the ASSIGN button and hit the SEL buttons that are not lit up, doing that assigns the channel to be able to send to the selected mix.

There are a couple more ways to do these same things but that is the quickest way to what should get your monitors up and running.

Also after adjusting the monitors remember to switch back to the main LR mix mode!!!

Thanks very much for this detailed feedback. I believe the output was coming from Mix 2, so I think that’s correct. As for the rest; I’ll be in front of the board again tomorrow, so will bring this post with me and walk through it!

7
Just to complement the explanation that Mike provided above.

I would recommend to first ensure we have a good gain structure on your channels. Best practice would be to have your fader in unity (0dBs) and start adjusting the gain until you reach a good level of your source.

Under the assumption that you L&R outputs of the QU16 are going to the FOH; We would need to analyse what XLR Output are you using to connect from the QU-16 to your Mackie. As Output Buses and Output sockets are fixed and labelled at the rear of the mixer, this will be very easy to identify.
Whichever this Mix is, press the blue button of it and as Mike explained, your faders will now be the send to that Mix (Make sure that the Master Fader is also in Unity 0dBs, at this moment the Master Fader is the Master of that Mix you are in)
At this point, raising the fader of any of your incoming sources should be feeding signal into the Mix and therefore, you should be receiving this signal in your Mackie mixer and your Headphones.
Adjust the levels accordingly among all your sources to create a Mix that you are comfortable with, your Mackie level will only control the level of the overall mix, but to make an adjustment of a particular channel you would need to do it directly on the Mix at the Qu-16.

Here’s a quick video to get you familiarized: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9P-Om8UBe4&list=PLq3_zC_Xz0PjdM-aethdufOFUMhQgNBpo&index=9&t=154s

Thanks so much! Again, I’ll be in front of the board again tomorrow night, so I’ll bring all of this info along and hopefully we can figure it out. I really appreciate everyone’s advice!

8

A disappointing update: Band practice canceled tonight, so I won’t get to try this stuff until Monday. :slight_smile: Will report back next week!

9

Hey, just a quick note. I am at band practice now, and I am happy to report that we have it working! I wish I had some sense of what was wrong, but it kind of just started working right away. I’m guessing the guitar player messed with it quite a bit in the time since our last practice.

Anyway, I greatly appreciate everyone’s advice and feedback!