Is there a product road map for the CQ ? While I like my CQ-18 a lot, there are some limitations that have me pondering… Thanks! Mal
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There is a product roadmap for CQ. You can influence its direction by commenting on the limitations you perceive in the CQ/Feature suggestions forum
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A&H NEVER announce anything in advance, except when someone “accidentally “ released the first advert for CQ, a few days too soon!
I’m starting to wonder if the CQ line is being slowly phased out or abandoned. The last major update was almost two years ago. The last maintenance update was almost a year ago. During the last two years there have been a whole bunch of bug reports and feature requests that haven’t been addressed.
I don’t know how frequently other digital mixer manufacturers send version and maintenance updates but compared to all of my other products, I’ve never seen anyone roll out updates so slowly for products that desperately need them. My TVs, phones, cars, computers, soundbars, tablets including Kindle, iPad, Samsung Galaxy, wifi routers, firewall, wifi access points, streaming devices, security cameras, water leak sensors, etc… can’t seem to go more than a week or three for all of those things to get the next update. My cellphone is three years old and gets updates every few weeks.
I’ve had mine for just over a year and am a bit disappointed that the issues I’ve reported have not been resolved and the features a bunch of people have requested have gone unanswered.
It’s a great mixer but from a software support side has been very disappointing.
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Yep. Very disappointed in the lack of care and communications from A&H. It doesn’t appear that ANYONE at A&H actually gives a hoot. The reponse I got above… yes there is road map and you can inflence it here … clearly written by a millenial that wouldn’t know customer service from a swift kick in the hinquaters… We may as well howl at the moon.
My CQ-18 is relegated to conference beeak out rooms where I used to plunk down a Zed 10. Stil got the Zed… and will when the CQ departs.
My XR-18 - at half the cost is a more capable mixer for mixing. My Ui-24r is as well.
Too bad as the CQ showed such promise… Pretty sure that the Wing is where I turn next.
A&H seem to be self absorbed and clueless.
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A&H is not a huge company with unlimited resources. I have no idea how big the team is that is responsible for updates and ongoing development, but I don’t think it is very large.
This team has clearly been busy with the Avantis RUFX grade and 2.0 firmware release (among other things). So yes, the team did have more pressing updates to push out, but that doesn’t mean the CQ has been forgotten or abandoned.
Umm it is now up to them to prove it… Communication isn’t all that hard or time consuming… when you get down to it, they are likely to sell 100 CQ for every dLive… the market opportunity for them is those of us that want to replace our aging XR, X32, SI 16/24/32/Impression and UI-24r mixers…
This is exactly why A&H has never speculated on the timing of updates, releases, new features, etc, etc, etc. A&H doesn’t have to “prove” anything to people. In fact, there is ZERO to gain from releasing that information and every thing to lose by releasing it. People (including me at times) already bitch enough about these things, imagine the response if A&H hinted that a release would be made in x time frame and it ended up being delayed for some reason. People would go into high gear bitching and moaning about it.
So if you are expecting some information from A&H regarding any potential firmware update for the CQ or any other product, you are going to be disappointed. Whether or not you can learn to live with that disappointment is up to you.
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The thing is, all those other companies don’t have to announce anything in advance because their customers know that there is always an update right around the corner.
To give you an alternate example, I recently bought a Tesla and they announce software updates well in advance and even if they don’t always give specifics, they do let people know what they’re working on. They put out 2 or 3 major updates a year and almost constant point updates, for example, V13 to V14 = major update. V14.1.1.3 to V14.2.1 = point update. Hell, their idiotic CEO can’t keep his mouth shut about what’s coming up in the future!
We’re all currently waiting for 14.3 which was released to early adopters last week. We know exactly what’s going to be in the update. People are never sitting wondering whether Tesla has turned their entire line into abandonware. Well, owners of HW3 are not so lucky but even they have been promised V14-lite.
With A&H we get nothing other than “we’re working on the FBA problem you reported….but it’s a bit harder to fix than we initially thought….so we don’t know when it will be fixed….“ And here we are almost a year later, complete radio silence other than the same.
I know they’re a much smaller company than Tesla or Sony or Amazon or Google or Apple, but from a consumer side, my $1200 CQ18T cost me a hell of a lot more than the $50 I paid for an Amazon FireStick, which gets updates every couple of weeks, meanwhile my $1200 CQ hasn’t received an update in over a year and not a single bug has been fixed or a single feature added in that year. I expect more for a product that cost me 24 times what I paid for a freakin firestick.
But that aside, it’s still better than what I was using before and simpler to use than the Behringer alternatives so I’ll keep using it. However, it doesn’t mean I have to be happy about their customer service and apparent lack of ongoing product support and development.
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Serious? You think the frequency of updates should be in relationship to the amount of money you paid for an item? You think the CQ console from A&H (a private company with somewhere between 125 and 275 employees) should have more frequent updates than the $50 item from Amazon - currently the largest company in the world (by revenue) with nearly 200,000 employees?
I’ll be blunt…… it’s attitudes like this that keeps A&H from announcing anything publically IMHO. People love to demand things…… and get pissy when they don’t get what they want. And and not trying to say I’m immune to demanding things from A&H. I absolutely have expressed my disappointment when things are slow to be released, but I can also understand the realities of limited resources and man power and try to give them the benefit of the doubt instead of comparing them to Amazon (largest company in the world), Apple (2-3rd largest), Google (2-3 third largest), Telsa (10th largest), and Sony (59th largest company in the world).
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I think the level of support should absolutely be proportional to the amount of money I paid for an item, an exception being that no matter how much you pay for something, if it’s advertised as having a particular feature, that feature should work properly, without bugs that make it ineffective in some situations. I don’t care how big or small a company is. As a matter of fact, I think the smaller the company, the better their support should be!! And in general, I’ve found this to be the case, with some exceptions.
As a guitar player, I’ve received much better support from smaller companies such as Friedman than I’ve received from much bigger companies like Mesa and Marshall. Hell, I’ve emailed Friedman before for support and gotten a reply from Dave Friedman himself within just a couple of hours…on a Sunday!!! I’m curious, where does Friedman rank in your list of biggest companies in the world?
I already addressed the rest of your post. If A&H had an ongoing dialogue with their customers about what they’re working on, even if they don’t know when it will be finished, people wouldn’t get pissy. What pisses people off is radio silence and feeling ignored.
“Hey folks, here’s what’s in the pipeline… we’re working on this routing option, fixing this bug, adding the ability to record a channel while playing another channel, allowing FBA to be saved as part of a scene…..but we don’t have an ETA yet as these additions are being developed and need to be tested, but they are actively being worked on. We understand how important these things are for our customer base so we’re moving as quickly as we can, but we are a small team so please be patient. We promise, we haven’t forgotten about you yet. Any questions about a specific feature or bug, please contact us at our support email. Thanks, A&H Staff!!”
And continue with an ongoing dialogue instead of radio silence. Seriously, how hard would that be??
Generally speaking, you can expect the same type of support from A&H. I don’t know about a Sunday response through their normal support channels, but A&H has a very good reputation with regard to direct support.
THIS is a user forum. It is NOT the official support method for A&H. While the A&H staff certainly monitor this forum and will occasionally reply when appropriate, if you want direct communication with A&H, you need to use the official channels.
Well, simply put: A&H: you know, that many users are strongly disappointed by the poor quality of the last update (e.g. restricted channel names) and missing information about update policy. A few enthusiastic user don’t mind, see above, but the rest will move to competitors in the long run. It’s also about the value of your gear - without updates, they quickly become difficult to sell and will thus prevent users to update to a more sophisticated mixer in the A&H stack. So the simple message is: give us information and updates or forget about the cq series. And I’m not requesting the implementation of highly speculative feature requests here, but basics. Not to mention the completely ridiculous announcement of yet untested compatibility on ‘newer’ apple os…sorry guys, can’t believe that this is a site maintained by a company once valued for its innovativity.
One of the reasons I did not go for the Ui24R was that my Ui16 had no updates in about 6 years at the time I bought the CQ20. As I understand it no, the Ui24R did receive faster updates but A&H still have some way to go before matching Soundcraft for update tardiness.
One of the main reasons for going with the CQ series was that the WiFi connection is so much better than either the Soundcraft or Behringer mixers that I have owned or used.
Am I frustrated that V1.3 is not here? Yes but since I bought the CQ20 in 2924 there have been several maintenance releases and a version up that gave us many ofvtge features we had asked for.
To other users I say patience is a virtue, to A&H I say please update as soon as possible. However I will not be stressed out waiting for it.
I work in the software industry.
Updates (whether regular or not) are useful for fixing bugs, malfunctions, or security vulnerabilities. Based on what I’ve read on the forum, and from my own experience, I don’t feel there have been many.
So what remains? Implementing the many suggestions from a handful of users here? (keeping in mind that what seems absolutely essential for one user may be completely useless for another).
No company in the world is going to release updates for every single new suggestion.
Roadmaps are rarely shared because they often don’t really exist until a major issue or security vulnerability is identified.
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I am 100% in Brian’s corner with this discussion: $1,000. is prety near the bottom of the barrel in console pricing so if Guitarman is looking for a "Price/Service relationship pehaps he should consider purchasing a Waves LV1 Classic for 10K where the service is exemplary.
Hugh
Like I said, the cost of an item is not the only factor. I have plenty of devices that cost me much less than the CQ18 that get updates constantly. A&H does reply to emails but their support and continued development, even if just to keep the software current in the market, has not been impressive. A reply is great, but if the problem never gets fixed…
As to JB’s post, I don’t expect a new firmware release for every suggestion, but if they’re going to have a “suggestions” forum, wouldn’t it make sense to actually implement some of those suggestions? It has been right around a year since the last update. In the software/IT world this would be very close to abandonware by now. I don’t know, maybe in the digital mixer world firmware updates are uncommon and products become abandonware right after being released. QSC Touchmix 16 hasn’t had any firmware updates in almost what, 9 or 10 years now… ? It’s still being sold but the software development is pretty much dead.
So yeah, maybe the mixer world doesn’t really align with the rest of the software world as far as updates are concerned.
Either way, a little communication about future updates, bug fixes, etc, even if it’s to say that no future updates will be expected, would go a long way.
I think we are all guilty of expecting “windows” speed updates but fundamentally a Digital Audio Mixer is a piece of hardware. There are no major bugs and many of the AH range have had updates or even new models in the year or so since the last major feature update.
While we have all probably voted more than once for a desired feature, the fact is that the CQ series work well as designed. If the feature set is not to your liking maybe the CQ is not for you.
I have used most of the small format digital mixers in the past and they have all been lacking in some areas. However some have features that were nice but not essential to me.
In The last year I have not really needed them but I have needed a solid WiFi section and best in class mic preamps. The CQ20 has not let me down.
Am I looking forward to V1.3? Of course, I like new toys as much as anyone but the CQ20 still works week after week.
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I haven’t seen A&H make any blog post or other communication regarding their org structure, capacity, process, etc. But from what I’ve been able to glean, I would guess that a dedicated development team for each mixing platform does not exist. Instead it appears that development priorities are traded-off between all platforms, and the throughput that we see on updates is generally what they are capable of with their current staffing, software architecture, development process and tools, etc. I wouldn’t hold out hope for the situation to change, especially without a corresponding business model change to account for increased structural cost of more software development resources. By the way, none of this is a complaint, just my observation about the way they choose to run their business. There are plenty of other mixing console options in the world, and we all choose the one that best fits our needs. I tend to think A&H has carved out a good niche in the market, and there will always be some users who outgrow a given platform and need to spend the cash to switch to something new.