What is the Longevity of an Allen and Heath SQ6? I’m making a 3 year plan at my job. I have an Allen and Heath SQ6. I wanted to know the average lifespan on them for medium to a little heavy usage. Does anyone have an idea or where to look for this information? I checked the Allen and Heath website but no luck.
Personally I would say the “average life expectancy” of any digital console is probably 10 years. That’s not to say that every console will fail in 10 years, but the odds of something failing go up considerably around that time frame - especially for full consoles with faders, screens, buttons, etc. Many entities will plan on replacement every 7-10 years for this reason. At the very least, you should budget for the replacement in this time frame so that if/when something does go wrong with the existing console, the replacement isn’t a surprise and the funds/approval for replacement are ready to go at a moments notice. This can give you the flexibility to hold on to the console for “as long as possible” while still budgeting for the inevitable replacement.
You also have the potential that the manufacturer will stop producing the console after you purchase it, but before you are ready to replace it. While you should still be able to get general support for devices that are EOL, eventually parts are going to be harder to find. Again, this is probably one reason why most entities plan to replace every 7-10 years.
Obviously there is no hard fast rule, so it really just depends on what your entity is comfortable with.
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Thank you for your reply. That was helpful.
Another way to think about this is that today’s digital consoles are effectively a computer. A very expensive single purpose computer, but still a computer. I would be hard pressed to claim that the average life expectancy of the individual computer parts is more than about 10 years.
Let me add a little more:
Decisive factors for lifespan are primarily also the wear and tear of the mechanical components and whether the device stays in one place or travels around the world.
The faders are relatively easy to replace or, if possible, clean first.
There have also been examples here in the forum where encoders also caused problems – usually the most used yellow one. These could also be replaced or perhaps cleaned.
And then a console that’s always in the same house under the same climatic conditions and is properly covered should last longer than one that’s constantly on tour, freezing in a cold truck in the winter and baking in the open air in the summer.
And finally, there’s also “moral wear and tear,” when a device still works perfectly, but is no longer state-of-the-art for you, even despite firmware updates.
All of these are also factors for lifespan, but they can’t be listed in a table.
I would definitely expect a 10 year lifespan minimum for a looked after console, especially one installed in a venue.
Aside from faders needing cleaning/repair/replacement; our last console (OG Digidesign Profile) lasted us 17 years. That was being used every single day, including by students in the sound engineering college that use our venue. Didn’t help that one of the lecturers hated me and purposely wasn’t careful with the console.
Realistically I could have got it repaired and got some more life out of it as it was only an issue with the stage rack, but I felt it was time for an upgrade and used that as an excuse to get the bosses to change it up and get the s3000 in.