TriAxis/2:Ninety - I must be weird.

I actually prefer the sound of my effects processor going through the triaxis effects loop, vs triaxis out to processor in. It sounds less digital and
warmer to me. Also, I prefer half-drive on the 2:ninety for most of my sounds. More vintage and creamier sounding with natural distortion.

When you run the processor in the loop, it hits a final tube before output. And yeah, the half drive is fantastic. I'm in the same boat dude.

keithl said:

I actually prefer the sound of my effects processor going through the triaxis effects loop, vs triaxis out to processor in. It sounds less digital and
warmer to me. Also, I prefer half-drive on the 2:ninety for most of my sounds. More vintage and creamier sounding with natural distortion.

Click to expand...

But running a digital processor in the Triaxis loop chops up your tone

The A2D and D2A converters in todays effects boxes are good but you might want to try using a mixer to mix your dry with your wet effects... then your tube tone never gets converted to digital (kill the dry in your effects so that you don't experience phase issues)

Just something to try... it might make you feel better about keeping a portion of your signal analog all the way through your expensive tube gear!

Seeya

Joe

PS: the guitar signal goes through the V5 output Tube whether you have the FX loop IN or OUT

a2dconverter said:

keithl said:

I actually prefer the sound of my effects processor going through the triaxis effects loop, vs triaxis out to processor in. It sounds less digital and
warmer to me. Also, I prefer half-drive on the 2:ninety for most of my sounds. More vintage and creamier sounding with natural distortion.

Click to expand...

But running a digital processor in the Triaxis loop chops up your tone

The A2D and D2A converters in todays effects boxes are good but you might want to try using a mixer to mix your dry with your wet effects... then your tube tone never gets converted to digital (kill the dry in your effects so that you don't experience phase issues)

Just something to try... it might make you feel better about keeping a portion of your signal analog all the way through your expensive tube gear!

Seeya

Joe

PS: the guitar signal goes through the V5 output Tube whether you have the FX loop IN or OUT

Click to expand...

I see what your saying about the mixer, but how does running it in the effects loop vs in-between the preamp and power amp "chop" your tone?

Hello Keith,

Unless your FX processor is not digital, since the Triaxis FX loop is Serial, the Triaxis signal is being converted to Digital and back to Analog when your signal goes through the FX processor.

[I used "chop" to illustrate that your signal is being digitized]

Here's an example of how to get your effects to run in parallel...

The most important part is that the Triaxis A output, (see below), always passes the grail-tone to the mixer un-effected & un-digitized...



I hope this helps

Regards

Joe

a2dconverter said:

Hello Keith,

Unless your FX processor is not digital, since the Triaxis FX loop is Serial, the Triaxis signal is being converted to Digital and back to Analog when your signal goes through the FX processor.

[I used "chop" to illustrate that your signal is being converted to digital]

Here's an example of how to get your effects to run in parallel...

I hope this helps

Regards

Joe

Click to expand...

I was just saying/asking if your not using the mixer technique, it's just as digital (even more so) going from in to triaxis -effects processor- power amp vs using the effects loop. Your entire signal is still being converted to digital (somewhere) before it gets to the power amp.

The TriAxis has a switchable FX loop, I don't see why one would go through all this trouble. I have a GT-6 which doubles as a MIDI controller and it basically switches itself in and out of the chain and while the AD/DA converter in those units is less than stellar, with levels matched, FX on and in a live context, I wouldn't notice the difference.

Hi Guys,

Just to explain what's going on...



Triaxis OUT A goes right to the Mixer and is never converted to Digital

Triaxis OUT B is processed by the G-Major 2 which processes your dry signal with the effects.

The G-Major 2 is set to KILL-DRY (or 100% WET) so that no Dry appears at the G-Major 2 outputs. (You need to Kill-Dry because the G-major dry, appearing at the mixer with the Triaxis dry, could cause phase cancellation)

That way your Pristine Triaxis Tone is Mixed with your 100% FX Only, and you can balance the two!

You're right; in a live context, anyway you connect this gear, it won't bother you ...I'm a tech and get paid to do what people like, whether or not I can tell the difference in sound quality or not... and to confuse things further... this will blow your mind if you have a few parallel processors...





http://stagecue.com/triaxis.html

Yes, I understand all that. Thanks. But, If you're not going to do that, your signal is going to get digitized somewhere and with my gear I prefer the sound of the going through the effects loop.

I will ad that your "mixer" idea sounds like a great one. I am definitely going to try it.

a2dconverter said:

Hi Guys,

Just to explain what's going on...

Triaxis OUT A goes right to the Mixer and is never converted to Digital

Triaxis OUT B is processed by the G-Major 2 which processes your dry signal with the effects.

The G-Major 2 is set to KILL-DRY (or 100% WET) so that no Dry appears at the G-Major 2 outputs. (You need to Kill-Dry because the G-major dry, appearing at the mixer with the Triaxis dry, could cause phase cancellation)

That way your Pristine Triaxis Tone is Mixed with your 100% FX Only, and you can balance the two!

You're right; in a live context, anyway you connect this gear, it won't bother you ...I'm a tech and get paid to do what people like, whether or not I can tell the difference in sound quality or not... and to confuse things further... this will blow your mind if you have a few parallel processors...

http://stagecue.com/triaxis.html

Click to expand...

I just remembered the only draw back to using the TRIAXIS FX LOOP...

When you bypass the FX loop in the Triaxis, it disconnects the FX Send and Return Jacks which means that any delay trails or reverb decay, from your FX processor, are abruptly cut.





With a parallel system you can mute the FX inputs when switching patches so that the delay trails or reverb decays carry on...here's an example...

Imagine that you are running an FX processor in the Triaxis FX loop and you have just switched in a High Gain Sound with a long delay for your hot guitar solo. (The delay trails filling in as you play).... Then you switch back to your rhythm sound that has no delay, the Triaxis FX loop disconnects your FX processor and all of your delay trails abruptly cut-off.... I'm sure that you've noticed this when you turn the Triaxis FX loop off...

Imagine that you are running a Parallel FX system and you have just switched in a High Gain Sound with a long delay for your hot guitar solo with your delay filling in as you play.... Then you switch back to your rhythm sound that has no delay. If you have a GCX to mute the FX processor Input and leave the FX processor outputs connected to the mixer with your dry signal, the delays trail for a few seconds, (or longer), after you switch patches... just like you would expect on a studio recording. Bob Bradshaw has made his living designing parallel systems like this for Steve Lukather, The Edge and EVH.

The important thing is that you are happy with your sound .. I would experiment with the above so that you can see how it makes your live sound more spectacular as it will sound more like the guitar delay on your recordings.

Here's some more pics...






Note: in the parallel example above, the dry is panned left and the wet is panned right...if you pan the dry and wet to the center, the dry/wet mix will go to both channels of the power amp. This is more useful in a live setting as both channels have dry+FX and you only have to mic one cabinet. (For the above, I separated the wet and dry into separate channels of the power amp for clarity.)

Normally you would want to run a separate amp for dry and FX, or like Brian May who has three amps... dry, wet left and wet right. (separating the FX from the dry, by the use of separate amplifiers, decreases the inter-modulation distortion in your dry signal; albeit making it more difficult for live micing.)

Panning the Dry to center and the FX Left output Panned hard Left and the FX Right output Panned hard Right gives you a Stereo set-up...(Dry appears in the middle)


seeya

Joe

I always felt that by running my processor through the Tri's effects loop that all my effects sounded better. (Tri, send to Processor, return from Processor, Tri to Power Amp) I've tried Tri to Processor to Power Amp, but that always sounded horrible.

jeff5 said:

I always felt that by running my processor through the Tri's effects loop that all my effects sounded better. (Tri, send to Processor, return from Processor, Tri to Power Amp) I've tried Tri to Processor to Power Amp, but that always sounded horrible.

Click to expand...

Here's some generally industry accepted information....

I would not recommend running FX between the Triaxis and Power amp directly....The only right way to do that is to run a parallel system....(don't take it from me though... check with all of the major rack builders)

http://www.customaudioelectronics.com/custom_shop?view=article&id=8

If you try running the FX serially, with your FX processor between the Triaxis and power amp, you have to be very sure that the input level to the processor is not too high; therefore causing overload of the analog to digital converter in the processor. (i.e. on a TC G-major, ensure that the level meters never go into the red)

This only applies to Rack FX as well.... you cannot put 'pedals' between the Triaxis and power amp due to the level mismatches that might occur... that will definitely sound very bad and distorted.

The biggest drawbacks of NOT using a parallel FX system are:

1. your Reverb and Delay Trails are cut off when you change patches,

2. your guitar signal is digitized passing through the FX processor and

3. it is difficult to change the dry-to-wet mix on the fly (With a parallel system it is easier to set the dry/wet mix ratio without changing the level of the Dry signal. (i.e. If you have set up your sound at a gig and you realize that in between songs that you would like a little more delay or reverb in the stage mix, all you have to do is turn up the rack-mixer channel that contains the FX returns... that way, you do not turn everything up and possibly overload the level at the PA-mixer that the sound man is not paying attention to )

And it's not difficult to set up a parallel FX system... it's just the addition of one item... a simple RANE (or other) rack-mount line mixer.

Here's some popular Line Mixers....

https://www.rjmmusic.com/minilinemixer.php

http://www.customaudioelectronics.com/products?view=product&prod_id=prod17

The best real-world analogy is how you use FX on a Vocal (live or in a studio).... The Vocal mic connects to the Mixing board and the engineer can SEND a portion of the pre-fader Vocal signal to one or two FX processors (for delay and reverb) via one or two FX BUSSES...Then, the BUS returns, (for delay and reverb), are MIXED with the Dry vocal.

Since the FX are added in parallel the Dry Vocal is:
1. never digitized and
2. it is easy to add less reverb/delay or more reverb/delay by just adjusting the return channels.

I hope this helps

Seeya

Joe

This is great information! I will have to try it.

It's worth noting that there are several FX processors that have "spillover" when you change patches - that means reverb and delay from one patch will still trail off naturally when you change to a new patch. This gets over one problem of not having a parallel fx setup.

A2dconverter, you're going to cost me a lot of freaking money if you keep posting such amazing ideas. :lol: