I just bought a Qu-Sub and this is the first time posting. I thought that I’d done my due diligence and bought two USB flash drives that were approved on the list but neither worked for multi-tracking:
So I guess those can come off the list. I was really trying to find one that was metal so when it was sticking out the front it couldn’t have the connector broken off by accident. No luck yet. Has there been any metal USB flash drives that many people have had success with?
YodaNoFear, I doubt that plastic vs metal will make much difference - I think the jack would break before the USB drive! Those drives are surprisingly tough.
Now, what has already broken, is my patience with A&H on this issue. I’m about ready to start a class action suit. Everyone who’s bought one of these mixers should be getting some money back - we were all sold a feature set that doesn’t actually exist.
Please try a usb3 portable hard drive before giving up. I’ve used one for several years plugged into my church’s Qu-24 with only one glitch, and that was probably because I hadn’t formatted the drive with the board for several months before the glitch happened.
I’ve Had my Qu-24 since 2014 and been using a Sandisk Extreme 3.0 recording multitrack for at least 30 shows without any problems at all. These flash drives are super fast and that’s why they work.
Garyh, Jmannn, Xyz - I’m glad you guys are happy. But if you read through this long thread, you’ll see that for everyone reporting success for a given device, there are also people who have that exact same device and it’s not working.
Imagine if this mixer only worked with a few models of microphones. Imagine that I had to have my “blessed” SM57, and I knew that if it ever died I’d be out of luck, because a new SM57 might not work. Imagine if a singer came up to me and said they wanted to use their own mic, and I had to say “sorry, this mixer only works with a couple of microphones, so you’ll have to use mine - even if we get yours working at the top of show, it might crap out half way through.”
That’s exactly the situation with the USB port. A few devices work, for a few people, some of the time, and there’s no way to say which ones will or won’t. The majority of devices don’t work, and it’s increasingly difficult to find any that do.
The only reason that 3/4s of us on this thread still own this mixer is because we can get away without needing the USB port. But we bought the mixer in part because of this feature. It would be like buying a mixer that had mic inputs, but most of the time you only need the line inputs, because the mic inputs mostly don’t work.
Allen-Heath have screwed their customers, and they are doing nothing at all to remedy the situation. It’s truly remarkable, and it’s a sad ending to what used to be a reputable company.
It is odd that so many USBs will not work. And that AH won’t sell any that are guaranteed to work.
I wonder what the real problem is? Perhaps they cannot guarantee that any USB will work.
Did they try to game the USB standard and get caught with their knickers twisted or what?
Why doesn’t the device just format ANY usb the way they want it?
Why can’t it recognize them at all? All my devices will recognize them even if they can’t use them.
AH should tell us the details of how they determine a usb is there and how they recognize it.
And exactly what the characteristics it needs are and the exact format so we could format somewhere else and get them to work.
Else, they really should be honest and update the documentation and say that it may or may not work and not hype it as a feature to use.
Except for the USB fiasco this is a very nice device that is trying to do just a bit more than the hardware and software can do without problems. If we don’t push too far then it is great for our needs. But for those few folks who need the most possible what options do they have now?
The real question is what did they do so terribly bad wrong that they have this problem at all? This is just not a problem with so many other devices where almost any USB will mix and match just fine. I do have problems with some of the very newest USBs on my old Win98SE computer. And if there were a driver then those would work too. And yes that computer is still running just fine!
I have had a few USB problems with my XP computer and otherwise that one is also running just fine! Most of those problems came down to worthless new crappy features some USB maker tried to add for some unknown reason. One was a driver issue but most drivers seem to be handled automatically with the XP itself when it sees a new USB memory stick.
USB works just fine on my CD changer as long as I use WMA files and not WAV.
What will AH be doing with the next generation of mixers? Will they repeat this fiasco with an SD slot or worse force us to use a mini micro or nano sized_SD du jour when that time comes?
Clearly we need a reliable way to back up the data. Something simple easy and cheap. As to recording it would appear that most folks either do not need it or else they can use the usbB to a DAW okay. We can burn a custom CD to cue for playback if we need to, although a better USB I/F would be more convenient.
I just wish AH would be totally honest and tell the truth so we can figure out how to live with it and stop wondering WHY?
Maybe also tell us what they will do different next time.
If this feature was vital to them then are they losing sales to the many other manufacturers?
If it is not vital then why did they do it , and do it this way, and just stonewall everybody?
@volounteer, my best guess is that A&H’s ownership has gotten so messed up because of them being sold and resold to different private equity firms that at this point they have gone a decade or more with management that just wants to suck them dry rather than build brand loyalty. I don’t have any insider info, it’s just a hunch based on their behavior and on the public record of their ownership.
I used to be a factory authorized service center for A&H and I gave up in part because of stuff like this. It’s so discouraging to see a formerly strong company fall into the same vortex of disposable product culture.
Thanks for your observations. Our rep has been good. Do not know AH history as previously I was with places using Behringer.
And had recommended an M32 but the MD bought the Qu32. I suspect because he knows the dealer and their support was the key.
Except for the USB nonsense I find the Qu quite good and ours works well. Admittedly we are a smallish vanilla type user.
But getting a USB that works so you can back up shows/scenes initial settings is sort of… well… very basic.
I wonder how much competition is impacting AH and their decisions. Also what PHBs doing to the engineers options while they were initially designing these products. It feels like the PHBs may have forced the engineers to try to do a wee bit too much with just a tad too little in the way of resources. But it could be that there is too much software involved and the engineers were too hardware oriented and did not appreciate what software can for you OR to you.
I had a good error free run on my QU with Sandisks which I bought originally for the same multitracking roll on the RME UCX. Which perhaps puts them in the 'older ones box. Perhaps next I’ll try some new ones, to see if the same models now fail.
I notice for the newer gen SQ section of the forums they are also having some issues’.
I am tempted to ask and do here, and some other forums, polls’ to attempt to gather a meter of success vs not out in the user base. Could it be it is a quite high % without troubles’, but also thus not posting?
To question 4, all I can say is that when I worked with the A&H tech support (several hours over several phone calls), they were well aware of the issue, and pointed me to the list of “working drives” (which, as we all know, contains negative examples for every positive; there’s no such thing as a 100% known-good drive), but ultimately they were not able to get it working.
For me, I have one very old drive with not much capacity that I was able to save and restore settings from; but I’ve been unable to find any drives that have enough capacity for recording that the Qu will even recognize in order to format. Tried every suggestion there is, online and from the A&H techs. Ultimately just put some gaff tape over the hole to make it stop taunting me.
I can record to the DAW just fine (over the back panel USB port); but what I can’t do is tell a band that if they want me to record their live event they just need to give me a thumb drive with enough capacity. Instead I have to bring my laptop along and then transfer files to the band’s drive afterwards.
I’d love to hear just a single word from an A&H representative on this thread. It’s hard to believe they wouldn’t know about it.
yes. it is very odd situation. it seems like the device is having more problem with newer USBs.
So are the USBs fundamentally different now? Or is the AH devices, thanks to firmware updates, having more problems.
With the USB memory working everywhere else without problems it really looks like AH is the problem.
Why don’t they just tell the truth and we can all move on.
Do you comment to always format with the QU utility makes me wonder if a significant portion of the problem that we see here is the result of folks trying to use a thumb drive that is not formatted that way.
All that said, It seems to me that Allen and Heath should just work with a supplier of reliable drives and just sell them.
nobody is disputing old USBs may work. We are saying the problems are now occuring with newer ones. WHY???
Maybe if you get it formatted once you are okay.
But we can NOT format any newer faster bigger USB memory only one white box type from Staples that is USB 2.0
I had some OLD ones at home and tried them. When they worked I gave a pair to the MD to use to back the thing up with.
If we were stuck with buying new ones we would never have gotten it backed up yet. Sure do not want to lose all the effort that went into all the initial settings and have to repeat all that work.
The problem is that the AH device will not recognize the USB memory so we CAN format it there.
Even if we format externally to their specs, it still will not recognize the USB memory.
The question is WHY??? WHY won’t the AH recognize a valid USB at all, and then alllow us to use it to format it ?
What IS the real problem between newer USBs and the AH devices now? Did the USBs change? Or did the firmware change?
Without access to detailed info about the hardware and software we are guessing at the cause.
The ball is in AH’s court as they have the info needed to resolve this. Or at least just tell us why it can not be fixed.
Could it be it could be but they choose not to fix it?
Why? There is a bug. Its really bad they aren’t capable/no desire to fix this.
Anyway, the bug doesn’t worry me any more as I use a 250GB SSD and it works well (well apart from the next “feature” which mis-reports how much recording time is available…) (ho hum).
I personally recommend not messing about with small USB sticks any more - its too frustrating - it cost me over £300 finding drives that would work and when Sandisk updated the product that did work from their v2 to their v3 the v3 wouldnt work. ouch. Too much money…grr.
Here however, are the details of the 250GB drive I use that has worked solidly for me for a while now (which probably means Sandisk have discontinued it… )
Note that the SSD has a small footprint - no more hassle than usb stick (less likely to be damaged actually. Wont suffer if thrown about like a HDD will.
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