Allen & Heath SQ5

Great product

Great price for execellent product

Almost perfect

Knobs and faders are really poor quality, don't now any sq series mixer that are older than 2years without thesee problems. Never had these kind of problems with qu series. You can feel the difference But other than this it is a awsome desk. Also allen heath should do a feature that lets you transport bought sq plugins over usb. Would be really useful when touring and using other sq desk on the road.

Amazing Desk

This is an incredible desk for the price. Very versatile

Awesome

What can you say? This mixer is very good, and in my book it's the best in it's price range. Can't go wrong with a SQ!

Unless your a proficient sound engineer, stay away

The sound quality from this mixture is very good. However, the documentation on how to use this mixer is hideous. Terrible YouTube video tutorials, features buried deep in arcane menu's, awkward workflows to those who do not well versed with digital mixers. If you are not proficient with digital mixers, and needs some help figuring how to use this STAY AWAY. Instruction on how to use it is abysmal or non existent. Get ready to have a nice mixer with no way of knowing how to use it. Sucks. Will never buy an Allen and Heath product again. I am technically proficient with a background in technical fields.

Best on the market at this price-point

I'm a professional Live Audio Engineer working with #1 Artists, Globally.

I usually use the D-Live for big shows but we needed something smaller for Promo & Acoustic Tours. So, we decided to get this,

The I/O, usability, versatility and sound are incredible. Clean, musical and quiet preamps and fantastic. The Processing is the same thats in the D-Lives so no change there.

Its just great - Buy over any other small format desk and you wont be dissapointed.

Very good.

Love it :-)

I've already been mixing shows on larger D-Live and also the SQ6 & 7 at festivals in the last years. The compact SQ5 is equally good. With proper configuration I don't miss the extra soft-buttons and encoders of the larger consoles. For now, there is still a lot of display info missing anyway on the Soft Rotary displays.

The DEEP plug-in purchases do add another big cost to the desk, but the quality, especially compressors, is amazing. My Waves plug-ins now remain in the studio. I use an AR2412 stagebox with this as the complete package needs to remain compact. It always sounded good with the GLD, and even better with the SQ series.

The screen and strips are readable in daylight.

Another factor for the decision was that A&H support is excellent.

Bad points:

-I dislike the very limited 6 characters available for naming the channels. Even the X32 was much better here.

-When transferring Showfiles & Scenes on a laptop, they do not contain the file-names that are visible on the console display itself, so it's a lot of guesswork when transferring from offline editor. So much easier with Yamaha or M32 scenes.

-Additional DEEP-packs too expensive.

the best overall digital console under 3000$

great mixer with perfect sound and quality building...the best choise

Stunning mixer

Very easy to use and great sound. I used it with the ME system with great result. The maximum 12 stereo Aux provided makes this console becomes a great tool for rehearsal which all my band members appraised a lot. Some people might decide on whether to get a QU or SQ, I think the budget paid definitely worth every penny.

The only cons I would say is that the patching of ME500 needs a bit of trial and error since the interface itself in the SQ is not very clear in terms of which channel is patched for stereo and which is for mono. The correct sequence of patching also matters in order to get absolute correct result. It takes some time to figure out what happened.

Great purchase

Great purchase

excellent customer service and support.