Hi all,
I was previously mixing on an iLive T-112 at work for all our gigs/Musical Theatre shows/concerts and Drama performances.
To put a long story short, we had a renovation of our main hall and upgraded to an SQ7 from the iLive. I’ve been really impressed with the desk mainly for gigs, concerts and Drama performances we run regularly.
However, I’ve been struggling to understand the programming. I mixed a 4 night production of Come From Away back in March and was left a bit frustrated by not being able to individually safe out specific DCAs from programming scenes. On the iLive, I could set up a DCA to control all the groups I’d set up in the band and then I could safe that out, so that the fader level remained unaffected for scene changes. I also used other DCAs for controlling multiple vocal channels at the same time throughout shows and on the iLive it was simply a case of ensuring that the appropriate DCAs were selected for the scene contents when it came to programming scenes. That way you could then have vocal channels recalled at the fader level and the band DCA fader would remain unaffected.
Am I missing something completely obvious here, as to how to achieve this on an SQ7? It was really frustrating to mix the show while having to keep adjusting the band level by obvious amounts over scene changes (there were a lot for Come From Away).
It seems like it’s an all or nothing scenario with scene safes on the SQ7 for quite a few parameters that were able to be individually safed out on the iLive in comparison.
I’m also using all 3 stereo matrices for FOH Tops, FOH Subs and a Camera Feed. My thoughts were possibly about sacrificing the camera matrix and moving that mix to an Aux instead, so the band could be fed to that matrix and safed out. Is this the only way of achieving this?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Joe
1 Like
I have found that A&H seems to be very particular about their product lineup. The features and flexibility of each model seems to be specifically designed based on the “position” in the product lineup. The “top tier” product (currently the DLive, but previously the iLive) has the most flexibility and most granularity/control over things. While this is true across all functions/features of the system, the scene management system is one place the differences are easy to see - with the top of the line models having very granular control over almost every element. Certainly being able to filter out individual channels, DCAs, busses, etc is possible on the top of the line model.
As you work down the product lineup however, this granularity is reduced at each step in the product lineup. The Avantis has less granularity than the DLive for example. Once you get down to the SQ series, the level of control is more along the line of being able to filter out a specific item on all channels, or all DCAs, or all busses, but the ability to be laser focused and filter out an individual channel, DCA, buss is simply not available. The QU scene management system provides even less control than the SQ series.
Given that this seems to be a very specific and thought out “product road map” and not a mistake, I doubt A&H is going to change their mind on how they handle the differences between the various product lineups. Therefore, while I would suggest making a “feature suggestion” in the SQ forum, I also don’t have a lot of confidence this will change because it doesn’t seem to be an “oversight” but instead a very specific and planned out overall product map.
1 Like
Is that what you are looking for?
That is the “all or none” situation that the OP was describing. You can hit the option to safe “All DCA Faders” for example, but you don’t have the ability to safe the DCA fader level of just “DCA 3” while allowing the other DCA faders to change with a scene recall.
The iLive and DLive systems allow for the extra granularity to safe specific DCA fader levels while not “safeing” other DCA fader levels. (The Avantis falls somewhere between the SQ and the DLive. I just don’t remember if something like the DCA Levels is that granular or not, so I don’t want to speculate if it has the specific functionality or not).
Cheers Brian, I also agree with what you’re saying.
We were given a quote for an Avantis in one of the contractor bids for the hall renovation, but unfortunately that all fell through and management ended up approving the contractor with the SQ on quote instead.
I can definitely appreciate that the top of the line consoles will have that extra granularity and ability to customise/be more precise with how you use the console for your own purposes.
I didn’t realise that the iLive was the previous “top tier” range of consoles for that era, maybe I’ve been too spoiled from that. Our iLive is in storage and I’m tempted to patch it back in and use this again for our next run of MT shows in May.
I thought I’d post in case anyone has been in a similar situation and found a workaround for this way of working.
Appreciate the response.
Hi Steffen,
Thanks for this, I have looked through the safing options (both the global filter and per scene filters) but unfortunately, this will only safe all of the DCAs when this is enabled. For my purposes, it would be really handy to safe a single DCA assigned to my band groups out to prevent any fader level recalls on scene changes.
I haven’t used QLab, but my understanding is that you can control fader levels (including DCA faders) from within the software through it’s MIDI integration. By using QLab to “manage your show” (including setting audio levels) instead of recalling SQ’s scenes, you might be able to gain control over individual channel/DCA fader positions (and not change other individual channel/DCA faders) while moving between scenes in the performance.
I wonder if mixing station has that feature.
Mixing Station has its own scene system that you can use to save/load scenes independently of what your console might allow. But I don’t think the recall scope of those MS Scenes is any more granular than what is available in the SQ Console itself.
Yeah, that’s a thought actually. I haven’t personally used QLab for recalling scenes on a console as of yet, I do use it a lot for our other shows.
Unfortunately, I haven’t quite got our SQ7 networked as of yet, I’m still working on getting this all set up in our control room.
That could be a workaround perhaps. I’ll have to have a look into this once we’re all networked.
