Compact Mixer Puts a 96 kHz Core on the Desk

On 5 November Allen & Heath announced the Qu-3 and the Dante-equipped Qu-3D, the smallest members of the Qu family. Both carry the same 96 kHz XCVI processing platform as the flagship Qu-7: 36 inputs made up of 32 mono or linkable channels and two stereo channels, 12 mixes, four matrices, six effects engines with dedicated stereo returns, 16 microphone preamps, eight XLR outputs and a seven-inch 1000-nit touchscreen. Control is eight motorised faders plus a master across six layers, with eight SoftKeys. Recording and interfacing come from a 32x32 USB-C audio interface, multitrack capture to SD card and stereo record and playback over USB-A. A 128x128 SLink port reaches the Everything I/O stageboxes. The Qu-3D adds an integrated 16x16 Dante interface at 48 or 96 kHz, expandable to 32x32 with an add-on. Pricing lands at EUR 1,849 and EUR 2,199, or AUD 4,299 and AUD 4,799 locally.

For installed audio the significance is not the size. It is that a console with a matrix bus and an automatic microphone mixer now fits on a desk at the back of a divisible hall. The mixing position in corporate AV is rarely a stage object: it is a small table where a facility technician sits, often with no audio training, in front of a room that has to work on the first attempt. Nine faders over six layers is the compromise that buys the footprint, and the 32-channel automatic mixer is the feature that makes a panel session survivable without an engineer riding gain.

The four matrix outputs are the routing tool most rooms actually need. Feed the main room from a mix, the divisible half from a matrix, the foyer from another matrix, and backstage from a fourth, then let the presets change with the room mode. Twelve mixes plus four matrices on a 36-input frame is a generous bus count for the size, but the local output count is the limit: eight XLR outputs will not cover a building, so the rest of the zones leave on Dante or on SLink to an I/O expander. That decision - which zones are analogue and which are networked - is worth making before the rack is built, not after.

There is one budget detail that catches people out. A 16x16 Dante interface at 96 kHz is not the same load as 16x16 at 48 kHz: doubling the sample rate doubles the bandwidth per channel, so a 16-channel flow at 96 kHz consumes roughly what 32 channels at 48 kHz would, and the receiving device has to be locked to the same rate or the subscription simply fails. In a room where the DSP runs at 48 kHz, the console at 96 kHz is a clock-domain problem waiting to be discovered during commissioning. Amtune's Dante audio modules and AES67 modular interfaces are specified with the channel count and sample rate written down per port for exactly this reason, and our Dante and AES67 product line documents the flow budget rather than just the connector count.