Allen & Heath Qu-32 32-channel Digital Mixer - Chrome Edition Reviews

I like that there is a low learning curve with this digital sound board. The volunteers in the church were up to speed a lot quicker than what I have seen with other boards. I also like that I was able to plug in the existing analog connections while we are working on running the digital snake. I was able to get the board swapped in in one day.

The sound quality is great and of course it has the advantages of any digital board such as saving scenes and the control we get on each channel.

Only thing that would be nice is seeing user entered descriptions on the board like you see on some other boards, but I would rather have 32 sliders which those boards do not have.

Digital recording has a low volume level but we are able to add volume and normalization during the conversion from wave to mp3.

It is amazing what is built into this mixer. There are far too many features to list them all. While I use this board in my studio with Pro Tools, it would be an excellent live sound mixer especially if you work with multiple bands and/or venues. The scene memory allows you to do a virtual sound check without the band. In addition, there are EQ and comp and gate presets that work with a variety of microphones and applications. The touch screen is quite a time saver when changing settings on the fly. It also has a built-in SD recorder for either 2-track stereo masters or 16-track multitrack recording, I treaded my Presonus Studio Live 32 for this and I"ve had no issues with the QU 32. You won"t find a better mixer under five grand.

Just, WOW!!!
I have been seeing this board around for awhile...
I finally got the chance to "mess" with it at the 2016 NAMM Convention, and I got o do an Install at a Church with one recently. Bottom line... I WANT ONE OF THESE AND WILL GET ONE REAL SOON!!!
VERY simple to use and get running!!!
If there's ANY problem with this Board, it would be that you can't EQ your Monitors unless you use an Outboard Monitor System.
But the Sound Quality is Good Enough that, if you have that capability on your Powered Monitor Source, then you really won't need to do it from the Board anyway.
AWESOME BOARD!!! Probably the LAST BOARD you'll ever need... I think you can upgrade the Software from the site as well.
Paul Lea is MY "go to guy" at Sweetwater for things like this...
Beware, Paul. I'll be calling you SOON!!!

First time with a digital board. We use it at a mid size curve ( gymnasium) and it works great. Really like the app with it so we can adjust eq levels because the problems with echos that come with that type of building. Like that we can set it back to a known setting (called a scene ) after we use it for something other than Sunday services. With just a slight learning curve this board is just great and highly recommend it.

Thanks for thinking about me and my purchase of the Qu-32. I agree it has advantages that other boards do not have, and have really enjoyed its simple, but powerful interface and abilities.

My first digital board, (put away my Soundcraft GB4-32), and A & H made it very easy to get going and start recording in the first couple hours of use. I did study the board a bit before the purchase, and Sweetwater was a huge help with questions and answers, but still, up and running, recording a 5 piece band, effects, 16 channel record to thumb drive, iPad control, in a couple hours. Nice job on making things intuitive !!!

The beauty is that you can get going quickly and record, or spend hours getting deep into effects, routing, custom controls, DAW control, android monitor control, and on, and on..........

Works great with both Pro-Tools and Reaper.....An absolutely amazing product that fits very well into my studio. Oh, did I mention the touchscreen ?.......Now that was a great idea....fast, responsive, good size, easy navigation. The entire board is very well thought out !!!!

Thanks A & H.....!!!

Dan Guldenzopf
Full Circle Sound

PS....your form did not allow me to enter my musical background:
Guitar, Keyboards, recording, live sound...
Thanks.....

Among the BEST mixing boards this industry will ever see. The QU32 is very user-friendly. Right out of the box it is ready to go for standard mixing. I received so many compliments of what this board can do

The Best Thing That Ever Happen!
They Took this right out of my Head

This desk for what it is, is a great work horse. For trying to do what they wanted, it's great.

Having been involved in event production for almost 2 decades with a majority of that being FOH in an analog world I felt totally comfortable the first 5 minutes having the QU-32 out of the box. I've used every conceivable mixer out there, but having something with the feature set and layout of the QU I felt immediately at home. It's easy to navigate, it has clearly labeled outputs-not Mix1, mix 2, etc. I was able to figure out what I needed to do to get a great sounding mix without pouring through menu after menu or having to watch tutorials. Overall I was greatly impressed - enough so that I got my own QU-32, a QU-24, and a QU-Pac to have as a portable mixer on the road. I'd recommend the QU series to anyone who wants a robust and rock solid mixer without having to take a class to operate it.

I got the Qu-32 to replace some old gear (like 18 years old) and also to see what the development process for these consoles was like. Very pleasantly surprised with the overall sound, effects and capabilities of the Qu, but the big plus for me was A&H's willingness to listen to customer feedback and incorporate that in later firmware releases. When I started with the Qu-32, I still had a bunch of outboard gear to perform some functions, but after a couple of suggestions, that outboard gear is gathering dust as A&H firmware revisions meant it was no longer needed.
I mainly use the Qu-32 for outdoor sports events where there are lots of different activities happening at the one time. You can set up complex ducking and priority commentary systems. We have had up to 6 different areas running at once - with music ducked in each area only when the commentator for that area speaks - but with an "emergency" microphone which kills everything else and is heard in all areas. At the same time we were providing web and broadcast mixes to other companies at the events.
The transition from analog to digital was incredibly easy and the Qu was the easiest of all the consoles I looked at, and the iPad app is a killer. The Qu mostly lives in a secure cabin at events and I just wander around the sports carrying an iPad.

The preamps are extraordinary warm as the Zed R-16 but they have better range, and lots of gain, the mix and Daw Control are more intuitive and the Multitrak recording can be a life saver... Excellent design built to last, every channel has its own strength, very cool effects and incredible Eq and compressor in every channel letting you have the best sound of it. The final mixes are incredible Master pieces, very good implemented for the beginner or true professional this mixer does it all, and is incredible in the studio, pick one out from Sweet water the sales engineers are incredible too, they will help you to the Max... Thank you Sweet water sound!

We needed a 30 channel mixer for our church that was very flexible yet relatively simple for volunteers to operate. Cost was also an important criterion. I felt digital was the way to go because of all the adjustments that could be applied to every input and output channel, and because scenes and adjustments could be saved for different situations. I chose the A&H QU32 because it best met all of our criteria. The LCD screen meant we could see our PEQ and GEQ curves, which makes it easier for operators to understand these adjustments, plus it allows access to all settings without requiring a computer. It also has a powerful iPad app so that I am able to remotely monitor our operators during. A service. The QU 32 has 32 motorized channel faders, but these can be used on 3 layers to access input and output channel channels plus GEQ settings. We typically only use 20 inputs for normal services, so I was able to configure the mixer so that the custom layer only could be used to control all the ins, outs and 4 DCAs that we need for a standard service. This made it very easy for our operators to move from the old 24-channel analog mixer to the new one. Boy! Were they happy! Our music leader, not being a techie, could just turn on the mixer, log in as Standard user, and select a scene just for him. He, too, was happy. I'm happy too, for I don't have to be around for every service. The sound is great, with USB recording and playback, it's everything we needed, at a good price point. The reputation of A&H for quality, reliable products also influenced our purchase.

This is great tool for making great sound in studio and on gig. excellent sounding effects. There is an app even for Android devices

I bought to use with Logic Pro X, The interface is great. The Qu-32 and Logic Pro X work very well together. It does everything and more of what I wanted. I'm sure I'll still be learning more capabilities of the console 6 months from now.

I can guarantee that you will not find a better bang for your buck than this console. The Qu-32 blows everything else at the $3000-$5000 level, out of the water. The on board features, and tools are super useful, the sound qaulity is amazing. Coming from a Midas Venice U24 analog console, I didn't think this would compare sound wise, but I was very wrong. Don't be afraid of digital, at least with this one. After a few hours spent with it, I have learned how to operate it very fluently on the job site. It's very well built, and I am very proud to be sporting the A&H Qu-32.

And always, a big thank you to Sweetwater for their amazing service.

Harris Sound & Lighting
Springfield, IL

Great digital mixer

Lots of inputs- one of the only digital mixers that has 1/4" and XLR inputs. Great sound and extremely easy to use. Would score a perfect "5" out of "5" if it included LCD scribble strips. But the new A&H SQ6 will take of that.

It's taken me a while to learn enough about this board to be able to give a decent review. This was my first foray into live mixing at any serious level. The board has so many features that it can be a little overwhelming, at least for a weekend warrior like myself. First off, the build quality is awesome. No flimsy parts here. All XLR and 1/4" jacks are rock solid and snug. The knobs have a high quality feel to them. The touch screen can be a little unresponsive to my fingers from time to time, but I ran the calibration process and that helped quite a bit. The display is nice and clear and the colors pop. The user interface felt a little difficult at first, but I'm liking it more every time I use the board. What really impresses me is that it's very consistent between the board itself, and the Qu-Pad iPad application. By the way the Qu-Pad app rocks!!! It's absolutely worth getting a WiFi access point and hooking it up to this unit so that you can walk out in the room/venue with the Qu-Pad app and adjust the sound.

One super awesome feature is that you can record 18 channels of 48KHz/24 bit sound directly to a USB device. Make sure you check the Allen & Heath web site for supported USB devices before you go buy one though! The device needs to be fast enough to write all the data that the board is sending it, and many older devices can't keep up. I bought a little Seagate 2TB USB 3 drive for this, and it has worked flawlessly. The only thing that confused me was that I had to change the input source for all the channels to Qu-Drive when I played the tracks back from the USB device. But the UI makes this process super easy, as you can select all channels and switch them with one push of a button.

The built-in effects seem high quality. I haven't played around with much other than the reverb, and that sounds great to my ears. There are a number of presets that can be downloaded and imported from the Allen & Heath web site for things like vocal/drum mics, etc. I.e. you can select the track and apply the preset for some industry standard mics and applications like "SM57 Snare" etc.

I use Logic Pro on a MacBook Pro as the DAW software to interact with the board. I'm not sure that I'm in love with Logic, but it does seem to work. There are plenty of YouTube videos on the Allen & Heath web site for how to set up the DAW software, etc.

The preamps sound great to my ears. Not sure if I have a good reference to compare them with, but they seem to have plenty of headroom and all the tracks I've recorded so far sound awesome and true to the source. To sum it all up, I'm not a professional sound engineer, so I don't have extensive experience with other boards, but I couldn't be happier with this board for my needs. In fact, I also bought the little brother mixer Qu-SB, and that thing rocks as well!

The one thing that kind of bugs me with the Allen & Heath product line is that accessories seem very over priced. I paid a small fortune for the dust cover, and it turned out to be a thin vinyl cover that was probably worth about 1/10 of what it costs. Same thing with the goose neck LED light that plugs into the back. Very over priced. I'd say try to find alternative accessories if you need them.

So far the Qu 32 is great in every way compared to the TASCAM 32D and TASCAM 24SD recorders I previously used. My only issue and I'm not sure if it's the Qu 32 or the G drive hard drive I bought to record. The G drive will record for 2 to 3 minutes and stop recording. That is frustrating. It's not clear why that happens. All else with the Qu 32 is spot on! Gear equipment, work flow and plays not with Logic PRO X.

I'm using the Qu-32 as a recording console and control surface. I have a lot of inputs from synths and samplers, and I like to hear everything at once while I'm composing. I use the Qu-32 for shaping what I print for some pre-production mixing and tightening up. I also livestream live music and DJ sets, and it's good for that.

The control surface functions are ok, not amazing, and a hassle to set up, but once they are set up, it's good to go.

For the most part, features are easy to access and sound good. The EQ, while not super deep, is good, and sounds musical. The compressor is useful, but, in my opinion not very interesting. Despite being marketed for studio and live use by A&H, the compressor here is really not studio worthy. The effects are kind of difficult to use (the internal digital insert system is honestly very unintuitive and doesn't always perform as expected) and sound only ok. They're good for live use, but not what I'd record.

Overall, though, the 32-input audio interface facility makes this mixer a strong contender. The preamps and ins are clean, the ADC is good, and the core functions are easy to use.

It boots fast, the learning curve isn't bad, and the sonic results are good. It's just important to know that if you're planning on making this a studio centerpiece, there are a number of features that will probably not see much use.

Finally switched from using analog to digital after decades. This board was was perfect for transitioning . The routing, and analog feel was exactly what I thought it would be. More impressive was the sound of the pre-amps and the way Allen and Heath designed the over head and levels to work more like analog.

32 straight in and 32 direct faders keeps it simple and easy. The board has too many details to put on here, and I would definitely recommend it for live or studio.

With very little use the internal screws holding the side rails came lose. One fell out. Good news with a torx bit it is fairly easy to get into it. Allen and Heath did not return my call. Disappointed to see you get a one year warranty on the device. My other equipment that costs a lot less have 3 and 6 year warranties. My is the earlier version, not the chrome version.