Allen & Heath's SQ Mixes Greenland's Qooqqut Festival

	SQ-6 at FoH for the Qooqqut Festival

A compact Allen & Heath SQ-6 console was on mixing duty for one of the world's most remote festivals.

The annual Qooqqut festival brings music and culture to an insolated shore in the Nuuk fjord complex, cradled by the dramatic mountains of western Greenland. Organized by Greenland's cultural center, Katuaq, this year's festival was held on August 14 and 15. With no roads, no phone signal, and no Internet onsite, Qooqqut 2020 offered a rare opportunity to step outside the everyday world and experience a diverse program of music, workshops, and traditional sports. Tickets were capped at an intimate 250 for each day and the event was planned in close cooperation with the authorities to ensure compliance with COVID-19 guidelines.

Katuaq's sound technician, Angunnguaq Larsen, mixed FoH for the event from a 48 channel SQ-6 console, with an iPad running the SQ MixPad app providing him with a portable solution for controlling all the artists' monitors. An SQ Dante card in the console enabled the FoH / monitor split as well as providing multitrack recording capability. A pair of portable DX168 I/O expanders were placed onstage, connecting to the SQ-6 over the plug 'n play SLink protocol.

The SQ-6 proved the ideal heart of the system, as Angunnguaq elaborates, "The main reasons we chose to bring our SQ were the audio quality and the size. For this festival you can't just put the equipment in a truck and drive to the site -- everything has to be carried in by hand. I really like the sound quality and the headroom you get from SQ. I also appreciate the DEEP processing models in the compressor pack, and the onboard FX provide depth when you need it. With a busy program and short setup times, the mixer's ease of use and fast workflows are also really important. You can do pretty much anything with SQ."

When it is not running FoH by the fjord, the SQ-6 is part of the AV system at Katuaq in Nuuk, mixing performances and conferences in the center's 508-capacity main hall and two smaller event spaces.