Allen & Heath SQ-7 Digital Mixer

The SQ-7 is Allen & Heath's flagship in the SQ line — the same 48-channel XCVI core engine that runs the smaller SQ-5 and SQ-6, but stretched across 32 motorized faders so you're touching more of your mix without banking. It's a surface-plus-engine-in-one unit, not a rack brain, which means it lives at front-of-house or monitor world as the console itself. Sixteen local mic inputs and eight local analog outputs are built in, so a stripped-down gig can go up with nothing but the desk. The SLink ports are where it opens up — two independent 64-channel EtherCON connections that feed into A&H's ecosystem of DX and GX stage boxes.

At 18 kg and 530 mm deep, the SQ-7 is a real piece of furniture. It doesn't rack-mount in a traditional sense — rackUnits is 0 — so plan for a console stand, a rolling cart, or a dedicated FOH shelf. Power draw sits at 120 W nominal with a 150 W max, which is modest for a desk this capable and won't stress a standard 15 A circuit. The two SLink ports are the practical backbone: run one to your stage box for inputs, use the second to feed a monitor engineer's personal mix station or a digital split to another console, all over a single shielded Cat5e cable per link. That keeps your analog snake footprint at zero on longer cable runs.

The SQ-7 is the right call for a monitor engineer who needs fader-per-mix density without going to a dedicated IEM rack controller, or for a production that wants one desk to handle FOH and IEM sends in a compact touring package. If you're running more than two SLink devices simultaneously or need Dante/MADI natively without a card, look at A&H's dLive or Avantis families. Smaller rooms or engineers who genuinely won't use more than 24 faders at once should consider the SQ-6 and save the weight and cost. But if 32 faders and the SQ workflow are your target, this is the ceiling of that platform.