Allen & Heath's Desks Already Run FOH at More Clubs Than Any Rival. Now They Do the Effects Rack's Job Too.

What actually changed at the console level?

Allen & Heath first put the SQ+ range out on May 19, 2026, then walked it back onto the trade-show floor at Infocomm 2026 in July alongside a firmware overhaul for its flagship touring desk, Avantis. The headline move is the same on both products: RackUltra FX, an effects engine originally reserved for the company's top-of-range dLive system, is now standard on gear that a mid-size venue can actually afford to install. SQ+ keeps the same 48-input, 96kHz XCVI processing core that has run the SQ line for years, but adds four dedicated RackUltra FX engines with their own stereo sends and returns: reverbs, vocal tuning and pitch correction, amp modeling and saturation, the kind of processing that used to mean a rack of outboard gear next to the desk. The three new frames scale the same way the old SQ range did, from the 17-fader SQ5+ (16 XLR inputs, an optional 19-inch rack kit for a fixed install) up through the 25-fader SQ6+ to the 33-fader SQ7+, each with a bigger 9-inch touchscreen and a redesigned dark interface.

Why does this matter to the people who actually run club sound?

SQ desks are everywhere in club and mid-size venue installs precisely because they sit at the price point a venue owner or a touring production company can justify, unlike dLive, which tends to live on bigger stages and bigger budgets. Folding dLive's effects engine down into that SQ tier is a real change for the installer and FOH engineer who specs these rooms: vocal tuning, harmonizing and saturation that used to require a separate outboard unit, extra rack space, extra cabling and extra latency now sit inside the same box already on the wall. Avantis, Allen & Heath's flagship touring console, gets the same RackUltra FX engine purely through the 2.0 firmware update, no new hardware required, alongside a bump to its maximum channel and bus count, useful for the bigger festival stages and multi-room club installs that already run Avantis at FOH.

Getting dLive's effects engine down into a desk a mid-size club can actually afford is the part of this announcement that will matter more than the touchscreen upgrade.

What's the catch?

The upgrade isn't universal. Existing SQ5, SQ6 and SQ7 owners are not getting RackUltra FX pushed to their consoles: the new engines need the extra processing headroom built into the SQ+ hardware itself, so this is a buy-the-new-frame situation for the SQ tier even as Avantis owners get theirs free through firmware. Allen & Heath is softening that with a launch promotion: register a new SQ+ console and sign up to the newsletter, and the PlusPack, the full bundle of DEEP and standard FX Add-Ons including the new CompStortion, Source Expander and Dual Threshold Expander, comes free rather than as a paid unlock.