a distressor makes no distortion effect

greetings from hamburg

it is possible to use external effects as with an analogue desk, route signal to an aux, send it out of the desk and return it into a channel, mono or stereo. Second you can insert an effect into a channel by assigning an insert send and return to that channel.
So if you have an old favourite effect, pedal or whatever you can include it. You are not restricted to analogue of course, I have a much loved Yamaha SREV-1 so AES3 inputs and outputs used instead of the analogue output cards. You can also use external processing in a similar manner on channels so drag out your antique Valve equipment and plug it in.[]