Since the CQ20b is considered an ease-to-use mixer for the working musician, you would think that the MIDI would be standard MIDI and not that NRPN puzzle that I don’t know anyone uses. I am seriously considering sending this back and going with a MR18 just for that reason alone. I can live with the limited expandability but this is very frustrating!
It complicates things. But it’s solvable. What are you seeking to control, and do you need help troubleshooting?
To repat a reply Bill, is what you had in mind to control.
Im a weekend gigging keys/synth player and general band techie because of that.
As a band, we run Band Helper, a fundamenrally setlist/song library app but has so much more. Yes it runs what you probably describe as “Normal Midi”, keyboard patch calls per song as well as my vocal processor patches, guitar processor board patches etc. Our DMX lighting controller is slightly different in that the controller only recognises Note on off with velocity for brightness OR as I do, relative notes at full velocity triggering up to 48 user scenes which also have to be turned off.
The CQ or indeed , any mixer as I realised when first exploring WHEN we had that big firmware update. Its really a control surface much like a lighting rig and not so much a Patch oriented device. I cant speak or other mixers but A&H use this across all ranges as far as I know.
I have setup various Raw midi messages with iPad screen midi buttons in Band Helper to mute or unmute and can do the same within a song midi preset etc etc.
I hace been down the road with a physical control surface Akai Midimix and that was a total fail, needing a motorised surface and complex translator software to read back from CQ and set motorused sliders to current screen…etc…way too expensive ti setup.
As for calling scenes DURING a live band gig is a no no until we get some form of channel exclusion etc. (In full, this would be a long explaination why not based on trials)
So Im happy with mute controls and a possibility of using mute or fade on any if the 4 FX for specific songs but no more than that at the moment.
If I can help I will.
Allen and Heath have been using NRPN for level control for well over 25 years. Every digital mixer since iDR8 uses that format. I should know, I’ve used them all except DLive, and as a non-musician, MIDI, is just another message coding language which I had to learn. I have successfully used many budget priced midi controllers, eg Behringer BCF2000, with Midi Translator Pro software to control multi channel live sound effects for drama performances using SQ or Qu mixers. My CQ has not enough mixes for most of my theatre work.
The standard is to turn on FX2 and mute channel 7/8 (ambient mics) at the beginning of all songs and inverse that at the end. More specifically at the downbeat of the final bar. Stage Traxx 4 is the backing track manager. While I have achieved this, it took hours. Had effects and channel volume been a simple controller value it would be so much easier…. for my simple mind.
Please consider my dedicated convertor:
Open that link on Ipad using web Midi Browser, a free app that handle Midi API on IOS.
Connect the CQ to th IPAD, open the convertor, touch anything on the CQ and if there is midi assigned to it, it will automatically generate the message for ST3.
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