I have used the QU-32 in my studio now for almost a year and I am extremely happy with ease of use and sound quality! Lately, I have encountered a problem:
When I turn on my QU-32, everything is normal, then I recall my standard scene, turn on my DAW (Cubase 10) and then my channel 11 is muted and I can’t unmute it. If I mute channels 9-14, soft 1 and soft 2 also lit up and I can’t unmute 9-14 either. If I then change scene, I can shut soft off soft 1-2 and then I can unmute 9-13, but channel 14 remains muted.
The QU-32 seems to be working OK until I connect it to my computer and DAW so I guess there is no HW problem. I also use the DAW control feature.
What is going on here? What am I doing wrong?
Thanks in advance for any help I can get.
Cheers from Sven at Groovy Grove Recording Studio in Sweden
This sounds like you may have mute/DCA groups assigned which is causing this behaviour.
If you select a channel and press the Routing key, you can then press on the Mute/DCA Group Assign tab in the top right of the screen, followed by the Fn key.
This gets you to a page where you have an overview of assignments to each DCA and Mute group, so I’d recommend having a look through to see if any channels have been assigned by mistake.
Alternatively, you could go to the global filter in the Scenes page and block the Routing changes for the Mute/DCA.
Hi Alex and thanks for your reply. I have tried this now and it doesn’t help. Here’s another clue: When I press “S” (for Solo) on any channel in Cubase, the Soft 3 button lits up. I can turn it off but it doesn’t change that I cannot unmute one channel (today it’s channel 11).
It sounds like, in this case, that Cubase is sending out MIDI to the Qu. To test if this is the case, please try changing the MIDI channel on the Qu in Setup > Control > MIDI and see if this changes the behaviour.
If it doesn’t, please start a ticket at support.allen-heath.com for further assistance, as we will need to look at your setup in more detail.
Alex, I think that did it. Now it’s MIDI channel 2 and consequently MIDI DAW Control Channel 3. I believe this is what it should be, right? I wonder if this got muddled up when I updated the Qu-32’s firmware.
I will keep you updated.
Big thanks sofar. You guys are great. Quick and informal support means everything to a nitwit like me.
Updating the firmware shouldn’t have affected this, as it is Cubase sending MIDI to the Qu. If you go into Studio > Studio Setup and look at the MIDI ports in Cubase, make sure Qu MIDI ports are inactive, as this will be the root cause.
Hi Alex,
OK, it works just fine now. However, there are some phenomena which surprise me a bit. If I activate (click on) a track in Cubase, the mute button on the corresponding channel is lit up. I can unmute it so it is not a problem. The second thing is that if I press any of the Solo buttons in Cubase, the mute button on channel 13 starts blinking, again I can make it disappear. Qu MIDI ports are now inactive.
Alex, I just lost DAW control. There is now so much weird stuff going on I wouldn’t know how to describe it in a ticket. Do you have an upload facility so I can send you a short video? That would be a fast way for you to see what is going on.
There seems to be a lot missing.
You could say it is there and if I meditated on it enough it would be clear. Maybe it is me and not the manual.
OTOH many people say many things in this forum and I wonder where they got that info as I do not recall it being in the manual.
So if it really all is in there I will just keep reading and hoping it becomes clearer. I suspect some of it is buried under something else that I do not think to look at.
Full Disclosure: I am a degreed engineer with a PE license (not sure the UK equivalent) and have written technical documentation as well as used it. While A&H documents are good for engineers having written them I find them falling short of what non engineers need. But these days it is probably far better than what other products offer with their stuff. I just wish there were more and it was a bit better.
There seems to be a lot missing.
You could say it is there and if I meditated on it enough it would be clear. Maybe it is me and not the manual.
OTOH many people say many things in this forum and I wonder where they got that info as I do not recall it being in the manual.
So if it really all is in there I will just keep reading and hoping it becomes clearer. I suspect some of it is buried under something else that I do not think to look at.
Full Disclosure: I am a degreed engineer with a PE license (not sure the UK equivalent) and have written technical documentation as well as used it. While A&H documents are good for engineers having written them I find them falling short of what non engineers need. But these days it is probably far better than what other products offer with their stuff. I just wish there were more and it was a bit better.
Equipment manuals, in this case the QU mixer manual will take you so far after that is where true experience comes into play as to how to apply what you read in the manual.
I have used and set up many QU’s in ways not exactly taught in the manual but applied from my experience.
Oh…by the way I am really tired of hearing about your engineering degree!
Sorry about that. Next I will start telling you about my PhD too and teaching at the uni.
I know some manuals only take you so far. It is not experience that I lack but simple clear facts about the Qu.
It may be good for being written by engineers, but it falls far short of what proper documentation should be.
Hi Sven and Keymaster,
I’m facing a similar phenomena conerning the mute buttons using my QU-16 as DAW Controller for Cubase 10 Artist.
The Qu-16 is connected to Cubase (Mac) as Generic Controller via USB-Midi. Doing this almost every function of QU-16 is connected successfully to Cubase (Faders, Pan, EQ, …) an it’s a lot of fun to do mixing!
Now the Problem:
The mute Buttons in direction QU-16 → Cubase work fine: in Cubase the mute status of a channel follows the mute Buttons on QU-16.
But in reverse direction Cubase → QU-16 only of channels works fine - the mute Buttons will be activated when I mute the related channels in Cubase.
But doesn’t work, it seems not to be sent to QU-16 or the desk won’t understand the command … or my configuration is wrong at that point.
I assigned the mute-buttons in Generic Controller using the ‘learning function’, MIDI channel and MIDI address are recognized and set correctly when I press a mute button on QU-16. The MIDI Status is shown as ‘Note on’ which seems correct to me. The Flags are set to ‘Receive’ and ‘Tramsmit’ which should also be fine.
Firmeware Version is the latest, v1.95.
Because all other functions work perfect, I’m wondering what’s the problem with the mute buttons and I hope you can help me.
In terms of what is happening here. A mute on MIDI message (Note on) is different to a mute off message (Note off) for a channel, so you will need to set up two controls for each on & off action.
Yes, the Mackie Control Protocol via ‘DAW Control’ works fine, I also tried this out. But connecting via Generic MIDI Controller I can use also the EQ encoders on QU-16 to do my EQ settings in Cubase, that’s a lot of fun
But You pushed me to a interesting point saying that ‘Note on’ and ‘Note off’ Messages are not the same.
So today I installed ‘Midi Monitor’ and debugged the Messages between QU-16 and Cubase when you push ‘Mute’ or ‘Un-mute’ in Cubase to find the difference between the Mackie protocol (which works fine) and the Generic MIDI Controller (which doesn’t).
The difference is:
Mackie: pushing ‘Mute’ or ‘Un-Mute’ in Cubase, always a sequence of 2 Messages (‘Note on’ and ‘Note off’) is generate by DAW Controller App and sent to QU-16:
(Example for Channel 1):
Mute:
14:21:58.892 To MIDI In Note On 2 C-2 127
14:21:58.892 To MIDI In Note Off 2 C-2 0
Un-Mute:
14:23:13.653 To MIDI In Note On 2 C-2 63
14:23:13.653 To MIDI In Note Off 2 C-2 0
Generic Controller: only one single message is sent from Cubase directly to QU-16 (without ‘translation’ from DAW Controller App):
Mute:
14:19:39.700 To MIDI In Note On 1 G♯0 127
Un-Mute
14:20:32.555 To MIDI In Note Off 1 G♯0 0
==> So along to my understanding Cubase always sends one single message (Note-on or Note-off) and only via the DAW Controller App they will be ‘translated’ into the needed sequence of 2 messages expected by QU-16, right?
(By the way: QU-16 also sends this sequence of Note-on & Note-off message to Cubase for a single push of Mute button - what’s the reason for this?)
You mentioned the need of two separate controls to be able to send back a Un-Mute MIDI message understandable for QU-16 using Generic MIDI Controller (I think the MIDI sequence described above is needed).
I tried this but I coulnd’t make it working.
Do you have a concrete description how to do this?
In your generic controller, try changing Un-mute to Note On 1 G♯0 63.
I say this because a mute control uses a Note on message followed by a note off message. For example
90 20 7F 80 20 00 - turns the mute on for CH1
It is the velocity which changes the control on Qu. For example
90 20 3F 80 20 00 - turns the mute off for CH1
You may also notice that the note off message (80 20 00) is the same in each example. The Qu does work when you don’t send that last message for this control, so you can just send the first Note on message and change the velocity to change the control.
Hi Alex,
ok, I think I understand it. Now I’ll try to find out how to tell Cubase to send a ‘Note on’ with a Velocity > 0 for Mute-off message.
In Generic Controller it seems you can only set the max. value (127) for the Note-on message but not the min. value.
And toggeling the Mute function the Note-off message will be generated automatically with Velocity 0 => along to the docu of QU-16 that message will be ignored because of Velocity = 0 … that explains everything.
I’ll do some Research and will get back to you soon.
Hi Alex,
I couldn’t configure Cubase to send a Note-on message with a veloctiy value of 1 when Un-muting a channel.
It seems to me that Cubase sends a Note-off message with Velocity 0 as Default for Un-muting a channel … and I can’t find a possibility to change this behaviour. Even if I assign a second controller to a channel’s ‘Mute’ function (in fact there’s only a ‘Mute’ function and no separate ‘Un-Mute’ function) both controllers are triggered but both send a Note-off message when Un-mute the channel.
I also posted it in Steinberg Forum, maybe somebody knows a solution there.
Do you have an idea concerning Cubase’s configuration for this issue?
