setting levels and balancing multiple wet/dry effects

[mentoneman]

this inenviable task has been one which i've faced over and over again since assembling my first guitar rack rig in the early 90's.

with the desirable complexity of sounds multiple effect unit racks bring, the pitfalls of such a system can also shove one to the threshold of sanity.  once you get past the manuals, basic audio routing, wiring, powering, midi connections, and organization of it all,
 
next comes the task of real time control and combining the units and achieving not only the initial results you intended to produce, but then going beyond predictability into new and inspired territory with your gear.  but it's at this point that you can also get into trouble where you get sucked down rabbit holes and an effect overpowers a fundamental tone.

one interesting side effect of rack building over and over again is the speed and confidence you gain from past trial and error experiences.  there is also a motivation to re-explore your gear and be mindful of the basics as you delve deeper into it's advanced features.

which brings me to the subject of the post;
the reality is i am always learning more about my gear and it's programmable limits while simultaneously working backwards to ensure fundamentals like input levels and internal signal path routes are optimized.  and over and over again i find errors in the way i program a piece of gear or a combination of units.  
recently it has been discovering conflicts in levels or routings between effect blocks in existing TC G-force presets, or the presence of digital dry levels in my DL 8000r, or level differences and phasing between units, all while monitoring via headphones though my rocktron rack interface.  

my primary lesson is avoid digital dry at all costs.  it's bad enoungh that the dry in all of my rigs have been DIRECT signals. at least in this version i have a w/d/w setup and te dry is all analog; with parametric eq on it via the juice extractor, and a cab sim from the rack interface. haven't sipped from the two note coolaid yet:




i normally get the analog DRY core amp tone set into my rack mixer, then introduce effect unit #1, trying first to get the input level solid, then the fx bypass dry volume to match closely with the DRY.  

then slowly bring in the desired WET effects, paying careful attention to what is happening to my DRY sound.  once that is solid on the first unit, i repeat with the next effect #2, and either bypass or shut off the first effect #1 when doing so.

once #2 is golden, i reactivate #1 to see if the combination of the units sound close to what i envisioned, or if there are undesirable side effects like volume jumps, or skinny empty hollow or weird boomy sounds due to phasing.

i have 3 rack fxs, so i repeat once more and then test the final combination and tweak for overall impact.
but i have never been more aware of how much stuff can go wrong with phase and volumes while programming in multi fx rigs as i have been since going in ears with this rig.

i also have front end effects like flashback x4 and arion chorus, but i am less picky about their impact on level and resolution and just use them for fast and dirty impact.  simple obvious stuff.

[shredder]

Thanks for all that info. Definitely the key is signal levels... when they are just right, a simple guide is that your volume shouldn't change when the effects processor is bypassed but the effects loop is still on.

And drink the cool aid. The Two-Notes stuff is awesome. I have the Torpedo Live.

[mentoneman]

currently the juice extractor loads the head and i use it's post parametric/hush 6 line outputs to drive my DRY signal into the rack mixer which is adding cab emulation, and feed my 3 effects.

i have thought about the next path of upgrade; i "could" just use one direct out of the extractor into a two notes CAB pedal, and then take that cab/IR enhanced output into the rack interface which also acts as a 1 in/ 6 out splitter, to feed the DRY into the mixer and 3 effects inputs.

from there the next upgrade would be a better desktop style mixer. the simgle space line mixer is the live players de facto convenient guitar rack staple especially in my case when it also gets packed into a swiss army knife unit like the rack interface, but it really limits you in terms of level balancing and routing and lacks channel eq, meters, panning, auxes, soloing, and easy access to repatching something like a spx for kicks into my clean tone for a series tsc-spx fiesta.

since i have't played live in about a year and don't see that changing anytime soon i can worry less about portability!

finally i have several pedals i need to board together and loop switch with a controller like the boss ES that also spits out multiple midi switching and cc commands.