I recently purchased an AH for its sweet, sweet beefmatization abilities but I’ve been running into some issues. When using the AH as an aux send on the mixer* I get this phasing/comb effect that I can’t seem to get rid of. I’ve gathered this may be caused by the delay after converting the signal.
Is there any way to mitigate this by some fiddling, alternative routing or other ideas? Using it as insert effect is unfortunately out of the question as I can’t afford an AH for every track. Or am I stuck with this problem? feel free to help a technical analphabet out
*(fully dawless; mixer is an A&H CQ20B; using aux send/return so I can get a dedicated track of all the saturated signals for mixdown later)
I don’t currently have any idea but if you post an audio example of what you’re talking about it will always help people with the brainstorming or identification of the root cause of the issue.
I haven’t heard any complaints about this specifically and a lot of people around here are using AH so maybe it’s better to demonstrate the problem rather than look for a solution before the issue has been identified.
I presume there might be something causing a slight latency on your signal path? Could be the AH itself. Are you running the signal through it fully wet? (Not familiar with the device but I assume there’s a dry wet control?)
Yeah, from what I’ve gathered it seems to be an issue when converting back and fourth between analog and digital, causing delay therefore phase/comb sounds. But it just seems odd as I’m sending it back fully wet as you suspected. Did not see this issue coming at all
It wouldn’t be an issue with something like reverb and delay, but latency with things like distortion and saturation results in things like you describe even if fully wet
If it’s phasing then the return signal must be phasing with the send channel, you probably need to make sure the send is pre-fade and turn down the fader completely on the channel.
Is it the AH + FX? I believe the fx introduces ad/da conversion which would introduce latency even if tiny. I think the dry’wet knob is there to blend AH in without latency as you would just have it across the master.
That is unfortunately the nature of using distortion/saturation type effects as sends.
They’re are meant to be insert effects.
The phasing is caused when you double the signal, but with the small amount of delay, caused by that effected signal sunning through the cables and effect and then coming back, which causes phasing.
This isn’t caused by latency. The delay is caused by the audio signal having to physically move through the cables and device.
So, you may have better luck using this setup with VSTs, as there is no physical signal.
But this isn’t an issue with AH. You’ll notice this with any device that you try this with.
To elaborate on my post above, you can use distortion/saturation as sends perfectly fine but you need to send pre-fade to them (ie before the channel fader), and turn the channel down completely (or take the channel out of the routing to the master channel). This means you send 100% of the signal to the Analog Heat via the send, with no phasing caused by the channel still being in the mix. The AH has a wet/dry control so you can control the wet/dry mix there if you want without the phasing incurred by leaving the channel in the mix.
As the AH is on a send you can send multiple channels to it using the same method (pre-fade sends).
This principle applies whether you are using a physical mixer or vst’s in a DAW
I’m not an expert by any means, but a few months ago, I picked up a some cheap analog overdrive/distortion pedals as an experiment to see if it was possible to use them as sends or if there will always be phasing. AFAICT, it is possible:
Alright so here’s a little video. Please lower your volume by ALOT because there is a lot of dynamic range changes happening. I’ve tried having somewhat low volume but still, watch your ears.
The interesting thing is that the combing sounds occur on the AH headphone aswell, is this odd or have I lost my mind?
In the video I am fiddling around with the send volume, toggling pre/post fader on the send output, increasing delay and inverting phase etc.
I can’t see what you’re doing clearly, but at the end when you lower the channel fader (and presumably have prefade send activated) it sounds ok doesn’t it? (i’m only on a phone)
it might be easier to test with the AH set to 0% wet so you are just dealing with dry signal.
I also observe some phasing on my Qu24 if I send e.g. my DNII directly to the mixer, use the aux signal to route to AHFX and send this signal as well in the mixer.
The key thing is to lower the instrument fader, and have aux send pre-fader: then the signal is only output once in the output mix.
I had to rewire for now, but will try some more later this week. Lowering the instrument fader isn’t gonna work for my use case, but I guess there’s not much to do about from what I’ve gathered the past day. Might have to introduce the AH during mix phase in the DAW instead. Thanks guys, appreciate all the input
The weird thing is that the combing continues when only listening to the return track. Even hearing it in the headphone output of the AH directly. I have it running on the master output right now and it sounds delicious, so there’s nothing wrong with this unit.
Will do it tomorrow. Thanks for the tip!
