Nothing of a problem to be solved or anything, just curious. I really like hardware send effects. I have a BAM, a Quadraverb, two H9s which I mostly use for delay or reverb. So mostly reverbs and delays, which I can send to from a mixer and return to a channel that’s fully low cut.
All of which can also be done within my Elektrons: Rytm Mk2, A4 Mk1 and OT Mk2. Sometimes I use the internal effects more creatively / big, and the external reverbs more for moderate amount of air or more subtle hihats/percussion tails. Or exactly the other way around.
Fine as is, but a bit without thought or direction. Curious how you approach this.
I’m currently running Rytm stereo on my mixer. I’ve also had a period where I had all the individual outs to my mixer to EQ them and send them separately to external effects for more bold sound design/fx on some voices. Which was nice, but also a bit of a hassle keeping an overview of all the EQs and such. Now I don’t use the individual outs of the Rytm, it makes a bit less sense to use external effects boldly, cause I can only send the complete Rytm or Octa to external fx instead of specific voices.
I recently came up with a configuration using the Digitone inputs for send returns of my pedalboard. This sounds a bit strange maybe, but it works well, this way I dont have to dedicate channels on the ssl six for fx returns. I use the bus B outputs on the board to send to the pedalboard. This way I can also use the Digitones effects as external effects as well as the pedals.
I have a DT and DN both connected to OT A/B in and C/D in. OT main out to my MOTU in 3/4. OT cue to Doctor A. Doctor A out to Specular v3 in. Specular out to MOTU in 5/6.
MOTU main out to FMR RNC.
Works really nice as I use OT mainly for resampling/mangling DT and DN.
I can therefore send whatever from OT through cue to these 2 fx boxes.
Yeah with OT I also always consider it’s sampling and mangling as a priority. Any time I try a setup where I route signals in a way that I can’t automatically hit record on the OT ends up being let go.
I had my OT purely as send fx for a while. I only had one send on my mixer, and this way I could duplicate the input to two tracks, one with delay and one with reverb. It felt weird using my OT for something so simple but it was actually a setup that I enjoyed a lot. Should revisit it again sometime.
@AdamJay You actually taught me how to use a very mild reverb on the master channel. Like you use the Blackhole, which I often now reproduce on H9 or Quadraverb.
It’s really interesting how just using a reverb véry mildly and barely noticeable on your master bus, basically erases the need to think about reverb-sends on all your individual drum sounds like hihats and percs.
Which means you save the internal Reverb of for example my Rytm for more creative / atmospheric noticeable reverbs.