Allen & Heath QU-SB Portable Mixer

With no physical user interface on the Qu-SB, all that is left is a metal chassis that carries all the audio and digital I/O and that contains the analogue and digital electronics in a rackmountable (with its optional rack ears) 4U box.

Pros:

Compact and fully featured
Superb audio performance
Excellent iPad remote control app
iLive-derived FX and dynamics
Multitrack recording live at 48k/24-bit to USB hard drive
32x32 audio interface

Cons:

No Android remote control other than for monitor mixes
DAW Control driver is Mac only
No supplied wireless access point

Allen and Heath Qu-SB Portable 18in/14out Digital Mixer with Wireless Remote Control

If you're looking for the latest thing in high quality professional wireless remote digital mixing, Bob Thomas might just have found it...

Allen and Heath is no stranger to the concept of removing faders, meters and knobs from a digital mixing console. Its Qu-24 mixer, launched in 2015 (and reviewed by yours truly in GI Issue 38), had its faders and knobs removed to become the Qu-PAC in which the physical user interface was based around a touchscreen, a solitary encoder and a number of switches.

Since the Qu-PAC was launched, the competition in the compact, wireless, app-controlled, digital mixing console market has intensified. Allen and Heath has responded and have expanded their Qu Series offerings with the Qu-SB, an 18in/14out variant of the Qu-PAC concept in which every single scrap of its physical user interface (bar a configurable TRS footswitch socket) has been removed. The Qu-SB relies entirely on the Qu-Pad (iPad only) wireless remote app for set-up and control – so you’ll need to have an iPad to hand. Unlike many of its competitors, the Qu-SB doesn’t have an onboard wireless router/access point, so you’ll have to find your own router (I’d highly recommend one that’s 5G-capable) before you start.

With no physical user interface on the Qu-SB, all that is left is a metal chassis that carries all the audio and digital I/O and that contains the analogue and digital electronics in a rackmountable (with its optional rack ears) 4U box. Although the Qu-Pad app is extremely slick, easy to read and simple to operate, simplistic it isn’t, as the Qu-SB is, in terms of its functionality, essentially identical to any other Allen and Heath Qu Series mixer. If you’d like to explore the Qu-USB’s feature set (which I quickly ran through in the video) more fully, you can download the Qu-PAD app from the A&H website and run it in Demo mode, at which point you’ll have access to everything that the Qu-SB has to offer.

Speaking of apps, there are another two A&H apps that can be run with the QU-SB – Qu-Control and Qu-You. Qu-Control (iOS only) gives quick access to a simplified set of functions and control that seem particularly suited to installation and corporate use, whilst Qu-You (IOS and Android) gives you your own personal monitor mix on your mobile phone. The Qu-SB can support up to eight concurrent app users, although only two instances of Qu-Pad can be run concurrently – which in my band is probably one too many! Seriously though, that facility means that you could have your FOH and monitor engineers running Qu-Pad and up to six band members overseeing their own individual monitor mixes via Qu-You.