 Hello and welcome to another LPM unboxing. I'm Sergio Angelos. I'm here today with Tim Goldsrud. This is my first unboxing. I don't know. It's a lot of fun. And this is going to be a lot of fun. Yes. So tell us Tim. It's definitely looking forward to this. Tell us Tim. What do we have here? What are we going to unbox today? So this is an Allen and Heath SQ5 digital mixing console. So it's an audio mixer and it's going to be the new front of house console here in the big TV studio. Also, previously we've had another digital mixer in here, a Soundcraft UI24, which has had probably by the what, a year and a half of faithful service in here now. This worked well. It has worked well. This, though, is going to have some significant improvements over the UI24 and that it, for one thing, it's an actual physical console that has physical faders on it. Okay, nice. Whereas the UI24 only worked with an iPad, which is great because you can manipulate it from anywhere in the room. But sometimes, you know, Wi-Fi connections aren't the greatest. Sure. You want some levers. Sometimes it's nice to have a fader. You can put your hand on it actually. It's physical. Right. Cool. And also, this console will also still have the ability to be controlled from iPad. So they will lose that from it. Okay. Great. This console also, well, let's, let's unbox it. Let's unbox it first and we'll talk more about this. Do you want to cut the top and we'll get to it? See what the sucker looks like. Nice. With my Swiss Army knife here. Okay. Carefully. All right. Oh, I see it looks like it's nice. Here, maybe we should set it down so we can look it out. It's not too heavy. So what do we have first here? What is this? It's a light. Oh, it's a box. It's just a, it's just a, it's just a cardboard. Maybe? No, yeah. We'll recycle that one. We will. We will recycle this. Okay. Let's turn it around like this. Oh, wow. Wrapped in plastic. Very nicely wrapped. Wow. Looks like we'll need to register it with Alan and Heath. Yeah. Wow. That looks beautiful. As I mentioned, you know, physical faders and these faders are also motorized. So motorized meaning what? Meaning that one of the things we'll be able to do with this console is set up scenes for certain shows. Okay. And then as you flip between different scenes, the faders will are motorized so they'll move themselves to those preset positions. Gotcha. Very cool. Yeah. The other, the other thing that this console allows is that while there are these 16 physical faders plus a 17th for the master fader, there are these buttons down here which select different layers. Okay. So even though there's only 16 physical faders, there's actually, I forget the total number of actual inputs you have available, but it's something like 64, I think. Whoa. So as you flip between these different layers, then you can access the different inputs that are actually available on the console. So layer A would be 16, layer B would be another 16. Would be like maybe 17 to 32 for example. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. So then as you flip between the layers, you would see the faders will go ch, nice. Pretty cool. Yeah, that is cool. This, one of the other upgrades of this console compared to the Soundcraft is that it operates at 96K, 96 kilohertz in terms of sample rates. So it's a, whereas the old one operated at, operates at 48 kilohertz. So this is operating at a higher audio resolution. Okay. For all the internal signal processing and routing that it does. We can also record directly from the console that has a USB port here. And so by connecting a USB drive, we can do multi-track recordings directly from the console, which is, I think, logistically will be a big advantage. Yeah. Because then you can record something here and then just take that hard drive right on down to the studio downstairs and start mixing it. Cool. Nice. So this console is oriented towards live sound. Okay. Whereas the equipment we have in the studio downstairs is a little bit more oriented towards recording, as you know. Yeah. We flip around the back. This is where, if I come around this side, I can show you. So this top row, you'll see that there are 16 XLR inputs. So this is where we can connect either microphone level inputs or line level inputs, analog inputs, I should say. And then there are 12, so this row down here are the analog outputs. So 11 and 12 are set up by default as the main left-right output. So what we'll do for the setup in here is we'll connect those to our main PA speakers in here. So that will control the main stereo mix for what we hear in the space. But then we have the flexibility to set up an additional 10 mixes, which could be used in various ways. Okay. So I think one of the ways we'll probably use it in here is by sending a mix of the cameras, like these cameras we're using right now to record this. Since each of these outputs can have a totally independent mix, you set a mix for what you hear in the room and then maybe out of outputs 1 and 2 is what goes to the cameras, for example. And then so you can select mix 1 and 2 here and say you have one mix for the house, the sound, the house sound, and then you go to mix 1 and do a totally separate mix for what's going to the cameras, which is generally what you want to be able to do because what you hear in the room isn't necessarily what you want to send to the recording. Sure. Yeah, very cool. The other thing we can do with these multiple outputs is if it's a situation with maybe a band playing in here and we have some monitors set up so the band members can hear themselves, then another common use for this is to create separate mixes for each of those floor wedges. Okay, yeah. Another thing that this console is often used for and kind of out there in the larger audio world is running mixes for in-ear monitors. A lot of musicians use instead of floor wedges or in-ear monitors. Okay. That requires having lots of different outputs because each member of the band, generally speaking, wants to hear something a little different. Like the singer might need to hear a little more themselves. The drummer might need to hear a little bit more of the bass player. So you can customize all of that here. So you can customize all of that. Awesome. Which I think will be another big advantage. Yeah. It's going to greatly improve our capability for not only doing live sound but recording. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. Then if you're doing a recording session up here, for example, another thing you need to be able to do if you're recording a whole band at once, each of those band members needs to hear what the other people are doing. Right. Yeah. Also just like a live performance. Sure. And in that situation, they're often wearing headphones. Okay. So with this, we could create customized even stereo mixes for each person. Wow. So, you know, we have 10 outputs here in addition to the main two. So you could have, if you can think of these as stereo pairs, sure. You'd have five stereo mixes, you know, so you could do a band of five people and use this to just do the monitor mixing. Sure. But really send the recording signals to the studio downstairs where you're actually recording downstairs. Gotcha. Okay. So. Nice. Looks like we also have like this S-link network. Yep. And then USB 2.0, which I'm assuming you could pull this into a computer and recognize. Right. It will work as a computer interface. Cool. So, yeah, we could set up a laptop here and you could record right to a computer instead of just the USB drive, which is another option. And this S-link port is actually pretty cool. One of the other, because now that we're kind of in this Allen and Heath ecosystem, there are a bunch of other kind of ancillary boxes that can work with this. And S-link is their sort of proprietary format. And what allow is a future upgrade is to get a stage box. Okay. That is a place where, you know, if this is the stage area up here, you know, you might put the stage box right here. And that's where you physically connect all the microphones and also the outputs to kind of like the one we have over there. Kind of like that one, because that one's all analog. And so what this allows is that whole stage box to be connected over a single cap five cable. Wow. So it's all communicated digitally. Sure. To the console. Wow. Because this, I'm not 100% of the total number, but I think it's 64 input channels that it has. If you have this connected, you know, you can have a bunch of inputs and then you leave these analog inputs that are still available for additional. Wow. For additional input channels. So there's quite a lot of flexibility and capability here that I think we can grow into. Very cool. Is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up this unboxing? Anything special or why we decided to choose SQ5 over some other ones? Well, let's see. That's a good question. For me, I think as a live sound engineer, I really like Allen and Heath consoles because the workflow is very fast. I'm very efficient. I'm going to turn this around again. There are these, there's a there are a lot of really key functions you can get to quickly. Okay. These single knobs, first one being preamp gain, which is the first thing you need to do to make sure you have the right signal level coming into the console. And so in this case, you know, you can just select the channel you're working on and then you have one knob that you can work with. So it makes setup very quick and efficient. And I think the ergonomics of this console are very, very well thought out and it's really designed for a situation where you have to be pretty quick. Like we often do for sound post sessions, you know, when we're, you know, we usually have a very limited amount of time to do soundcheck. And so you have to be able to get things set up and, you know, solve issues quickly. And so this is going to be a really game changer, I think. Awesome. For being able to do that. Great. Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm looking forward to learning how to use this and seeing it in action here in the studio. Yeah, absolutely. Anything else you want to say about this questions you have? No, I'm just excited. You've got to peel something. We've got to register it. No, I mean, it looks really nice. It feels, I mean, sturdy. And it looks like it's got a really good build quality. Yeah, I mean, obviously, as you said, an upgrade from what we have or what we've been using. No, yeah, I'm super excited to see this bad boy in action. There it is. Now it's fully unwrapped. Now it's fully unwrapped. There we go. Cool. All right. Well, thanks, Tim. Thanks for unboxing this SQ5. And thanks for watching. Yes. See you all later. See you next time.