External FX Rack

[KirkyParticipant]

Hi

I use my own external FX (from waves Soundgrid, plugins in a DAW or even outboard) a lot. Unfortunately the way to integrate them in the sq’s is a bit clumsy and leaves a lot of the desks resources unused. Please create an “External FX”, which allows you to use external fx inside the fx racks. Example:

I want to use FX1 mix for a bricasti. I insert the requested “External FX” device into fx-slot 1. This “External FX” slot allows me to send the signal to outboard gear, and return it (like a channel insert basically). It then gets automatically routed to the dedicated FX-return 1, as it would if I had used an internal reverb.

Should be simple and is way more elegant and saves resources. In my setup currently, I don’t use the internal FX at all, which means FX sends 1-4 and all the returns are just wasted + I eat up 4 mixbuses and 8 channels for returns. Bit of a pain…

[arockParticipant]

There is a way to use the FX sends for external gear. You have to patch one of the effects that has a bypass button, like MultiBD. This then routes the unaffected send directly to the FX return, which you can then patch to an output of the desk. You still need to burn channels for the returns from your Bricasti, but it at least lets you use the mono FX sends of the desk.

[KirkyParticipant]

Hej arock,

thanks for the suggestions. That’s actually what I’m already doing, but I wanted to drive my point home in the first post 🙂 And not every user has MultiBD on his console anyways, so not an option for everybody. And although I’m doing it this way, it’s still not elegant. Your original FX returns become your second send, which can be confusing as well… I just think it would be so elegant to have an “External FX” rack, but I don’t think you disagree 🙂 Even better would be the ability to route the dedicated FX sends to outputs and define the inputs of the dedicated FX returns to every available input. That way, you wouldn’t have to burn an FX slot with that potential “External FX” rack. But I think it’s probably harder to reprogram the dedicated FX returns, to accept inputs other than the dedicated FX racks outputs.

Cheers,
Roger

[SteffenRParticipant]

you can still use a mix as send and channels as return
that’s the way it was for the last 45 years and it’s still working

[KilianBParticipant]

I’m on board with Kirky’s last suggestion:

Please let us patch the FX Mix Outputs in the I/O section, and, in a near perfect world, also the FX return channels.

[Author]

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