This is the problem we or A&H have. I don’t see any of those three “must haves” as a game changer for me. I suspect that I was the target market for the CQ. I had a Ui16 and know the limitations of that. I have used the small format Behringer mixers and they are
neither road worthy or that usable with the network implementation poor on both wireless and wired.
Thanks for reporting the stereo linking bug, Legend - I’ve passed that on to our software team.
Regarding the ascii crash, where abouts are you seeing this? I’ve tried entering ascii characters in the Other… option and it hasn’t crashed (it just doesn’t connect) - it would be helpful to know your device make and model too.
For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t expect this to work - domain names require DNS to work but CQ is an embedded device designed to run on an isolated local network, where typically there won’t be local DNS like you’re describing (especially if it’s using its own hotspot rather than an external device) - not least because the device itself doesn’t have the capacity to have a DNS name rather than an IP address.
It’s always best to report bugs to us in Technical Support - either by the form on the website (https://support.allen-heath.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new) or support@allen-heath.com.
Whilst we do our best to read everything posted here, we can’t guarantee we’ll see everything - so sharing directly is the best way to get things into the system.
Our developers are working hard all the time to squash bugs and create new things - so please bear that in mind. Development happens concurrently across all our product ranges too, so there’s lots of things to juggle. Most importantly, we’re always listening - so reach out to us directly on one of the two methods above and you’ll hear back.
A&H should consider either open sourcing the software platform or providing an SDK so that the community can maintain the product. This is my biggest hangup with this product; the software is problematic and I have no way to fix it myself, and yet, A&H doesn’t fix it, either.
Wrong. When the CQ comes online in a wired network, that network has its own router and network services. Other clients on the network can use DNS services or even their own locally configured hosts file. The clients then perform their own domain name resolution.
The CQ device doesn’t need to know anything about DNS for another device to address it using a domain name.
You have bugs in your software and a misunderstanding about how it’s supposed to work.
Please open source it so your customers can maintain it.
Well, my frustration with the CQ software and Allen & Heath’s unwillingness to maintain it, plus their unwillingness to let their own customers maintain it, has pushed me over the edge to no longer be an A&H customer. I’m eliminating A&H as a source of stress.
Allen & Heath’s competitors seem to take their software stack seriously. If you care about your customers, maybe take the time to actually consider and acknowledge critical feedback.
Sorry to hear that you’re unhappy enough to move on.
If the tools we make aren’t meeting your needs, our approach would always be to buy the mixer that does the thing you need. Sometimes, that’ll be a competitors product. Eliminating stress is an excellent goal in and of itself!
We work really hard on our products and are really proud of them - there’s a lot of A&H DNA through the CQ range and, in my personal opinion, the sound lovely and are a joy to work with.
I can’t think of a time where a company has open sourced a product that is living, and precious few even when products become end of life. But you can rest assured that CQ is alive and well, and we’re always working to improve the products we have on the market. Feedback is really important to us and and we’re always listening. As we’ve said elsewhere, we can’t always reply to every thread and we won’t always be able to implement every feature request, but we are always listening.
Did you report your bugs to us? I recall you had issue with DNS discovery, but I couldn’t see anything else that you were struggling with. Would you be willing to share what you were finding difficult?
Well, I can relate to @gplusplus as well. At first I was really enthusiastic when I first installed my CQ-18T in my home studio, but I’m really missing key features that make me regret my purchase. A&H not providing a roadmap or an outlook on getting new features is pretty bad as well, as I have no idea if the missing features will ever be added so I don’t know if I should wait, or sell and switch to a different console.
Features I miss most:
Solo/listen channels on the main output.
Bus channels.
Side chain compression.
Saturation effect (per channel).
Having to use the app to set basic stuff like channel names is quite annoying as well.
All missing features can easily be added without needing extra processing power (except for saturation?) but who knows if this is ever going to be implemented in the interface?
The “not knowing” makes it really difficult to decide if you’re going to stay with A&H or that you should be looking elsewhere to find a solution that already has the missing features.
I just want to say “Thank you” for a great sounding, very user-friendly mixing rig (CQ20-B). I like it’s sound better than our Qu-16 or Qu-SB. Also, it is way more user friendly for adding effects. Thanks from a gigging musician.
