Allen & Heath Qu-16 Live Mixer

Reviews | Allen & Heath QU-16
88
T
he project live console market
is currently seeing a wave of
affordable innovations. The
Behringer X32, released last
year, incorporated an astonishingly rich
feature list for its price. Now Allen &
Heath’s Qu-16 is taking it on.
The Qu-16 has evolved from a
condensing of their GLD and iLive
series of professional fl exible digital
mixers and is housed in a very compact
and rack-mountable console surface.
It’s solidly built, with a sleek modernist
profi le, and for a digital mixer there is a
welcome population of knobs amongst
the buttons on its upper half giving it a
hands-on feel. Below that are 17 long-
throw moving faders that are assignable
to all sorts of tasks including the setting
of the onboard stereo graphic EQs.
The ins and outs
With 16 mono mic/line channels and a
further three stereo line inputs this is
clearly aimed at the small gig world.
Two of the stereo inputs are balanced
jacks, the third is a mini-jack input for
visiting MP3 players. That’s it as far as
inputs go; there are no external effects
loops and there are no physical inserts.
All effects are onboard, of which there
are four available, two as auxiliary
busses and two as insert effects. There
are four mono and three stereo mix
outputs for independent monitor feeds
as well as a main output for the Front of
House send. A very attractive feature of
this desk is the wealth of expandability
options including remote on-stage
personal monitoring systems and
remote audio connections using the
proprietary dSnake output on the back
panel (see Expanding on the Qu-16).
Each input features four-band
parametric EQ with additional High
Pass Filter, compression and gating,
while the mix outputs each have
compression and graphic EQs.
The pros and cons
The control surface is laid out in an
intuitive way and if you already have a
grasp of the orthodox MO for digital
desks, a quick glance to fi nd the Select
buttons and a few taps on the touch-
screen will see you up and running in
no time. The tactile ‘analogue channel’
knobs bring a reassuring feel and an
alternative operational mode for the
selected input channel.
The sound of the desk is, not
surprisingly for Allen & Heath, of high
quality with newly designed preamps
based on their GLD series. There is one
drawback, however – you can’t name
channels. Okay, you can write them on
a strip of masking tape below the faders
but what happens when you’re on stage
with your remote iPad controller app
Allen & Heath Qu-16
Live Mixer | £2,159
Allen & Heath’s Qu-16 is packed with all the latest
performance needs. Tim Oliver goes onboard
WHAT IS IT?
A compact live
digital mixer with
touch-screen editing
CONTACT
Who: Audio-Technica Ltd
Tel: [phone]
Web: www.allen-heath.com
HIGHLIGHTS
1 Digital touch-screen
editing
2 Direct to disk
multi-track recording
3 Remote mixing via iPad
FMU275.rev_allenheath.indd 88 12/19/13 1:39 PM