Use of physical fader controller with the CQ-18T?

[rougenavarre]

Hi A&H team !

Think to go for a CQ-18T. Did someone tried to use physical faders controller like the Icon PA-X or anything else to control a CQ-18T ?

Thanks a lot

[frenchie]

Hello.

You’ll need a device that will act as a MIDI host between the CQ and your midi controller.

Hardware boxes like BOME BomeBox midiHub or CME U4Midi will allow dialogue between the 2.

You can also use an IPAD between the CQ and your controller. The IPAD, with the help of a little IOS app like Midimittr will act as a midi hub also.

Then you need to be sure that your midi controller speak the same language than the CQ.

CQ uses mostly NRPN midi.

Some midi controller natively handle NRPN, some don’t.

For those last ones, the hardware boxes above have extra features that can translate normal midi from your controller to NRPM understandable by the CQ.

There must be also IOS app that can do that (I don’t know).

And at the end, you have also DIY solution like mine:

DIY external midi controller for the CQ

Even if I can manage controlling the CQ on stage with CQ mixPad, I love to have physical fader for some reverb and delay that I need to adjust by song. Here is a simple setup to achieve what I need, using a DIY midi board kit, a USB hub, an Ipad with Stage Traxx 3 and midimittr IOS app. The midi board is an OpenDeck from shantea Conrol, that handle NRPN. It is plugged into a USB hub with the Ipad and the CQ. NRPN midi from the DIY controller is routed to the CQ via midimittr IOS app. All is…

[sic0048]

As frenchie said, you need some sort of MIDI converter because the A&H consoles do not support enough MIDI to make it work natively. You need to convert the MIDI into the command protocol that A&H uses.

Honestly one of the easiest and cheapest methods is to use the third part app, Mixing Station. David (the developer of Mixing Station) has already done all of the programming for this MIDI conversion. You simply plug in your USB MIDI controller to the device running Mixing Station (whether that be a computer, tablet, phone, etc) via USB. If it’s not one of the many MIDI controllers supported “out of the box” you’ll need to assign a command to each MIDI function that you want to use, but Mixing Station supports many of the most common MIDI controllers out of the box (meaning David has already assigned a default MIDI command to each function - but you are free to reprogram the commands if you want it to do something else).

For the cost of the Mixing Station license (less than $10), you can forgo the headache of trying to figure all of this out yourself.

[rougenavarre]

Thank you for that @frenchie Huge price gap between the BomeBox and the CME.

[rougenavarre]

Thank you @sic0048 ! Quite easy finally.