Hi Allen & Heath team! In the Processing Screen I always wonder to which output the faders send to. To find out, I have to switch to the Faders Screen where I can check or change the “Sends To” settings and then go back to the Processing Screen. This is time consuming and annoying and I often make fader changes to the wrong output. The color coding for sends to Main LR, Outputs and FXs is also not implemented in the Processing Screen. It would be very helpful to have more information about the “sends to” or even the possibility to change the “sends to” for the faders in the Processing Screen.
Perhaps I’m misunderstanding, but there’s a dedicated “Sends” area for each input channel on the Processing screen. The fader at the bottom always displays the Main level, while there are Color-coded bars for FX and Output sends in the box immediately above it. Clicking in this area allows the send levels for each FX and Output channel to be seen in more detail and adjusted.
It’s only Output channels in the Processing screen that lack this display, as you can’t route audio from one output to another. FX channels also have this Sends area (which, curiously enough, you can even use to route the output of an effect to its own input, which is disallowed elsewhere.)
Kate, thanks for the quick answer!
It’s the fader row at the bottom of the processing screen that is confusing me.
My experience is that the faders display and modify the signal levels sent to the outputs selected in the fader screen (Sends To).
Are you sure the faders at the bottom are always tied to Main LR only?
Unfortunately the mixer is in our rehearsal room but I will double check this week and come back to you on Thursday.
Thanks
Keep in mind that I’m describing the behaviour of the app on macOS and iPadOS which is generally similar to the built-in touchscreen on the CQ-12T and CQ-18T, but not identical. I have the CQ-20B so I’ve never seen the built-in version except in the manual, which seems to suggest that it uses a slightly different layout:
Here the Main LR send shows as little mini fader on the left side of the Sends block for every input, while a larger version shows on the right edge of the screen for the selected channel. Again, this isn’t how the app behaves and the manual isn’t explicit about how adjusting Send levels for other channels works – so what I described above is how the app behaves.
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I’m controlling the CQ20B with the CQ MixPad app V1.2.2 on iPad and MacBook, too.
Here is my Processing screen:
I am talking about the 8 faders at the bottom. There is no info where the signals are being sent to.
On all other screens like Config, Fader, FX and Home there is the “Send To” column at the right side of the screen. My question is, why can’t there be this column on the Processing screen as well?
Here is the layout of the Fader Screen as an example:
I can’t speak to why there is no label, since I wasn’t involved in the design. You can click on the Sends box for an input channel to see a labelled version of every output:
… but I can state with some certainty that the fader at the bottom of an Input channel on the Processing Screen has always been the MainLR send level as I’ve been exploring the unit. It can be different for other types of channels, mind you. For an Output channel it’s the volume level for that output, while for an FX channel it acts more like an Input channel – showing the MainLR send level.
You could argue that the Fader screen is the on that’s misleading because the selectable “Sends To” options aren’t correct for Output channels. These reflect the output volume regardless of what you select.
(If I had to guess at the difference in appearance I’d speculate that the Processing screen was optimized around getting as much functionality in one place as possible, which leads to a terser representation, while the Faders screen’s goal seems to be to get the longest throw possible for added precision, but that meant needing to have somewhere to select which level that long fader represented. Engineering as a discipline tends to force compromises as there’s never a single ideal solution.)
As a retired software engineer I fully get your point. After digging deeper into the MixPad app the last few days I would like to present some results:
- The faders on the bottom of the Processing screen are showing the level of the input sent to an output previously selected on the “Sends to” on the Faders or FX screen. They are not exclusively tied to Main LR.
- On the Fader screen “With an Output other than Main LR selected, the fader background is coloured to indicate that fader positions are showing the ‘Sends to’ an output that is not the Main LR” (from CQ user guide). This fader background coloring does not work on the FX screen and Processing screen.
- Probably a bug: When I select the Sends section on the Processing screen the field “Input To Main LR” shows the correct fader position but the level value displayed is the one for the output referred to by the bottom row fader. In my example input “Bass” is sent to output 6 “IEMHol”, the level is -9dB. The level of signal “Bass” sent to Main LR is OFF but the shown value is also -9dB. Even when I raise the “Input To Main LR” fader the value remains -9dB.
Here are my three Feature Suggestions:
- Implement a “Sends To” field on the right hand side of the Processing screen (like FX screen). The magnified fader doubles only one fader in the bottom row and could be omitted.
- Implement fader background colouring for sends to outputs other than Main LR in FX screen and Processing screen.
- Correct the bug in the Sends section of the Processing screen: The level value in the “Input to Main LR” field shall show the input level sent to Main LR.
I see it! Do we dare turn it or will it create a black hole?
I had just come to this conclusion myself and was looking to retract my prior comments here. It’s a very strange bit of UI design to have the selection on one screen affect the behaviour of another with no visual cues of any kind (beyond noticing that the fader positions happen to belong to some output other than MainLR!)
It’s definitely worth filing a formal ticket with A&H support if you have a readily demonstrated bug. I’ve found the output level faders in the Processing > Sends section and FX > Outputs will occasionally be frozen in place on the macOS version of CQ MixPad and filed a bug documenting what I had seen. They were able to reproduce it quickly and forwarded it to their software engineering team, so they were quite responsive.
I think adding the fader row to the bottom of the Processing screen and FX screen in the MixPaq app was basically a good idea but the implementation led to some inconsistency in the UI workflow.
I am looking forward to getting a MixPad software update, soon.