Allen and Heath CQ-18T Review: The Screen Is the Point

Every rack mixer in this price class is controlled from a tablet. The CQ-18T has the tablet workflow too, over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but it also has a seven inch touchscreen on the front panel with the full channel strip on it. That sounds like a convenience and is actually a reliability feature: the most common failure mode of a tablet-controlled mixer is not the mixer.

Alongside it sit Allen and Heath preamps, an automatic gain assistant that sets a sensible starting level on each channel, and a feedback assistant that identifies ringing frequencies. Both are aimed squarely at volunteers. The field is in our rack mixer roundup, and the direct rival is covered in CQ-18T versus XR18.

Sixteen preamps is generous at this price. Six buses is not, and the two numbers have to be read together.

Sixteen preamps suggests a full band, and six buses says otherwise. Those six outputs have to cover every monitor mix, the stream feed, an overflow room and anything else the building needs. A worship team of six on in-ear monitors, each wanting their own mix, exhausts the console before the stream gets a feed of its own.

Work out the real number with the monitor mix calculator before buying. If it comes back above four, either commit to shared mixes, which most church bands accept more readily than musicians claim, or move to the X32 Rack with its 25 buses, or add wired personal mixers so the monitor mixes stop consuming console outputs at all.

In published owner reviews the screen is the most praised feature, usually in the same sentence as a story about a tablet that failed. Preamp quality and the general audio character draw consistent approval, and the automatic gain assistant is reported as genuinely useful for volunteers rather than as a marketing feature.

The recurring complaints are the bus count, the depth of some settings inside the touchscreen menus on a screen that small, and the app, which owners generally rate below the Behringer X AIR app for speed. Reliability reports are good, and the physical build is described as solid for a three rack unit box.

Budget pick, because eight preamps may cover your service: the CQ-12T at $899.99 is the same idea in a desktop box for a church that sets up and tears down weekly.

Step-up alternative, because six buses is the ceiling: the X32 Rack at $979.99 has 25 buses and an AES50 port, and gives up the onboard screen in exchange.

Cheaper rack alternative, because the screen may not matter to you: the XR18 has the same sixteen preamp count for around half the price, if your volunteers are genuinely comfortable on a tablet.

Buy it if you have a 150 to 400 seat room, an input list at or under sixteen channels, four or fewer monitor mixes, and a volunteer rota where somebody will eventually forget the tablet. Buy it if the rack lives in the booth and somebody needs to reach a channel quickly during a service.

Do not buy it if your band is on in-ears and everybody wants their own mix, and do not buy it if your input list is at fifteen channels and climbing. In both cases the money is better spent on a console with more buses, covered in the digital mixer roundup.