Can't get my FX working

[PeterHParticipant]

Hi,

I have tested and setup my new SQ5 at home. Tried a nice reverb on my ST3 input…worked like a charm.
Now I have moved the SQ5 to our rehersal-room and try to get the nice reverb on FX1 enabled on my VOX channels.

– I click FX1
– Press ‘assign’ and ‘select’ on the vocal channels
– Raise the faders of my vocals

When I make sound in the mic’s I don’t see any sound sent to the FX1 rack. (so obvious also nothing on the return channel)

When I switch the FX1 effect to PRE-FADE I start hearing the reverb. But I want it POST-FADE so it follows the channel-level and panning of the channel.

What am I missing? Almost everything is still quite default.

[peterlandersParticipant]

I’m assuming you’ve got the dry vocal faders raised in the LR mix too, since that’s what would be giving your post-fade input to FX1? I know *I* got burned by that when first messing around with the FX racks!

[PeterHParticipant]

Ah, that could be it!
Since I only want them on my AUX outputs for our IEM I muted the complete LR-main mix.

Will the panning of the channel be followed by the FX?
So if I pan one of the vocals completely to the left… will the FX also be panned to the left?
(my guess is that that will not be the case 🙂 )

This shoul be done by using an insert FX on every channel… right?

[peterlandersParticipant]

I haven’t tried a setup like that, but if it’s a stereo reverb I’d assume it would work with your panning, though the effect output would ‘exist’ in a full stereo space. You know, source enters on the left channel only, the reverb is mapped in a virtual space with a source on the left side of that space. The effect will probably spill across the sound stage, but of course it would in real life too.

As for the dry level fader thing, I thought of my own head-scratching experiences when you described your problem. Took me *ages* to figure it out… 🙂

[Dave MeadowcroftParticipant]

Reverb isn’t normally done by inserting an FX.
Inserts are normally used for things that completely replace the original signal with the processed one, such as as compressors, gates, eqs, dessers etc. This inserts the effected signal directly into the original signal so just raising the fader for the source channel in the target mix will present the fully effected signal.
When you want to blend the original signal with the processed one you would normally use the channel FX send to send the signal to the FX and the corresponding FX return to bring in the effected signal. This is for things such as reverb, chorus, delay etc. So you would raise the faders for both the source channel and FX return channel in the target mix to get the mix of them you require.

I’m not certain on the SQ, but FX sends are generally mono so your channel pan will make no difference. FX returns are stereo though so you can pan/balance as you like on those, but generally they are best set to C to sound natural.

[peterlandersParticipant]

I just assumed the FX send mixes were stereo but I don’t see an indication either way in the reference. Worth a try though, I guess!

[Chris93Participant]

Since I only want them on my AUX outputs for our IEM I muted the complete LR-main mix.

It’s not really possible to do post fade FX in your monitors in the same way you’d have post fade FX in a FOH mix, because it’s only “post” the channel fader for the LR mix, not post the aux send level to each mix.

If you send a vocal channel post-fade to an FX unit, and return it to a monitor aux, then you’ll get more reverb in your monitors when the vocal channel is turned up in the LR, but it won’t change as you adjust the level of that vocal channel in your monitor mix.

You could make this work by duplicating channels, and using a subgroup for your monitors to essentially section off part of the LR mix, but this gets more complicated.

Chris

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