Clean, Capable W/D/W + FoH Grid Routing Idea

GreatGreen

Power User
Hey guys, I’ve found that with the Axe-Fx, the potential for setting up W/D/W patches is there, but setting up the grid to give you maximum flexibility can be tough to lay out. Lately I’ve been trying to really nail down how to setup the most flexible grid layout for W/D/W and after some trial and error, I think I’ve come up with something that works. The setup is technically a W/D/D/W setup but for the sake of (relative) simplicity, let’s just call it a W/D/W setup for now.

Just so everybody understands how the Outputs are routed here:
Output 1:
Front of House
Output 2: Dry middle cab
Output 3: Wet outer cabs

Also, one of the requirements I set for myself was that any amount of Wet and Dry signal had to be routable to both the Wet and Dry outputs for maximum flexibility. For example, a lot of people like to devote the wet cabs to 100% Wet signal, but I find that if you run your Dry signal into all three and Wet into just the outer two cabs, suddenly your tone gets gigantic and way more fun than just having a single Dry cab running your baseline tone, however even with three Dry cabs, you can still run your Wet effects on just the outer cabs so you always maintain the clarity of the center Dry cab. But if three Dry cabs are too much, you can always just turn down the dry signal by a few degrees in the Wet cabs, or all the way down if you want. Or you could even mix in some of the Wet into the center Dry if you want also. Best of all worlds. I also wanted to be able to freely toggle on or off any wet effect with minimal programming setup and still be able to independently manage the dry signal.



So here’s my first attempt at this kind of W/D/W setup. It was clunky and pretty awful:
JnZjPtu.png



See how bad this routing is? It technically works, but it’s not clear to follow, troubleshoot, or edit. Also, none of the wet effects flow into the other wet effects, so for things like Delay, I had to fake the flow by adding another Reverb block after it in case I wanted reverb in my delays. CPU is needlessly wasted and again, confusing to follow and edit. The single good thing about this idea was combining the Wet and Dry outputs into a single Cab block which goes into the main Output 1 block so FoH gets everything in an easy-for-the-sound-guy-to-digest stereo signal.



So after going back to the drawing board and thinking about it for a while, I came up with what I think of as “trough” or "aqueduct" routing. Dry signal flows along the top of the grid, then flows down into the wet effects in the middle row where the effects are, and finally the fully wet signal ends up on the bottom row. Here’s the idea with just one effects block.
The trick is that for it to work, the effects blocks have to be set to 100% wet and Bypass mode set to Mute In or Mute Out:
MAEmDPE.png




Here’s two effects blocks routed for W/D/W. Both effects blocks set to 100% Wet, Bypass set to Mute In or Mute Out:
WxyIeOd.png




Three W/D/W effects blocks:
KXsCMGu.png




Four W/D/W effects blocks:
cVmQGjs.png


So what’s with the weird block routing along the bottom two rows?
Well, that’s what it takes for each effect to reach all subsequent effects when they’re all set to 100% wet:

Qus5EEI.png


Sorry about the bad drawing, just illustrating how each effect block reaches every subsequent block that comes after it, so each block can be set to 100% wet and still receive ALL signal from each block that comes before it, and because each effect is 100% wet, there’s no doubling of any signals. Your Reverb block will get your Dry signal along with proper amounts of every previous effect that reaches it. Everything gets processed by your Reverb block so you don’t have any weird unnatural sounding artifacts of running, say, parallel reverb and delay, where your natural guitar tone sounds like it's in a real space but your delay trails exist mysteriously outside of any physical place with surface reflections. Same with the Delay block. It gets your Dry signal along with every Effect block signal that comes before it, so it all gets delay processing. Also, your dry signal is directly routed to EACH Wet effect so you don't have to carefully calculate how you need to mix each effect and how you're going to get dry signal to one effect but not another, etc. Just set the output Level you want for each effect and after that it all just works.


There’s also one more trick for the balancing and mixing of Dry and Wet effects to all of your cabs and/or FoH, should you wish. Mixer Blocks:
vncXYTp.png


Here, the end of the routing changes to accommodate a Mixer block before each of your outputs. This routing also allows you to maintain any mix of Wet and Dry signal across all three outputs while freely being able to turn each effect on or off, only having to toggle that one effect. You don’t have to have a universal “Dry signal on Wet cabs” kill switch or anything like that. Also, I added a Vol/Pan block after the Wet effects, so a pedal can be used to mix in exactly how much Wet effects are present in real time.


So what does the final patch / routing look like?
CsV53fz.png


So here it is, my kitchen sink W/D/W "trough" or "aqueduct" routing (whatever you want to call it) template patch that can ALSO present a well mixed stereo signal to Front of House. Visually, after setup it's fairly straight forward to use for easy editing, and it will allow you to do pretty much anything you want, Wet/Dry routing and mixing wise. Mix any balance of Wet and Dry signal to any of your Outputs, toggle Wet effects without having to ever worry about Master Wet Mute. Keep all three cabs running Dry signal for gigantic tones while keeping your Wet effects freely togglable and away from your center cab. Mix your wet effects in real time with the VolPan block. Also, this is an Axe-Fx III non-Turbo model, so this patch will work for all versions of the Axe-Fx III. :D

Output 1: Front of House
Output 2: Dry middle cab
Output 3: Wet outer cabs

Patch Download: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=9581


And here's a few more compact versions of the same concept. Not everybody wants to deal with Kitchen Sink style patches.

yk3GwzB.png

Patch Download: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=10343


cLRQaQk.png

Patch Download: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=10344
 
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I loaded up your template and I can't get any sound from it ? Any idea why ?

I checked the patch, found and fixed the problem, and replaced the link in the OP with a link to this new patch:
https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=9581

I must have uploaded the test patch and not the final one.

To fix the 1st patch:
Step 1: Go to the Feedback Return block and set "Return Level" to "100%"
Step 2: Go to Pan/Trem block and set "Bypass Mode" to "Thru"
Step 3: Go to Cab block and set "Balance" to 0
 
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@GreatGreen I really appreciate your step-wise pedagogical explanation. If/when I can set something WDW I'll try it out. Are you a teacher?
 
@GreatGreen I really appreciate your step-wise pedagogical explanation. If/when I can set something WDW I'll try it out. Are you a teacher?

Thanks! I'm not a teacher but I do sometimes write how-to docs for my job, and the more info I put in them, the less questions I have to spend time answering after it goes out, lol. So I figure it's just better to over-explain the first time around. Not that I mind here though, I'm happy to answer any questions anybody might have or whatever. This stuff is fun.

On top of that, this routing took some time to come up with, and it might not be the most intuitive thing to understand by just looking at it. So, I wanted to make sure I explained it as well as I could so anybody who wants to use it can just set it up themselves instead of having to rely on downloading some patch they didn't build that might not 100% suit them.
 
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And if you're really hurting for horizontal block space, technically you don't even have to give up any blocks you'd otherwise be able to keep if you're ok with mixing every effect from its own individual block. Just route the effects like this:

IyUE0y0.png


The connection highlighted in yellow is the "send Dry signal to Wet cabs" route. Keep or delete it depending on your preferences.
 
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would this work in principle for the FM9 ? how would it change ? CPU

The FM9 has 3 stereo outputs so it should be able to accommodate the output routing.

I'm not 100% sure about the CPU capabilities. If I had to guess I'd say the FM9 almost definitely has the CPU to handle a patch like the "compact" patch above, but not the "kitchen sink" one.

The only other unknown I can think of would be the Mixer blocks. Not sure how many of those the FM9 will let you place on the grid.
 
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This is sooo cool.

I would like to do this wdw setup but with my tube amp, so basically using the Axe as the effects processor and mixer, no amp sim or cabs. Just pure effects processor. I have a stereo power amp to power the wet cabs, two Mesa 2x12's.

Could this be done with the Axe only and no line mixer? How to add dry to the wet cabs? I have a line out box feeding the Axe. Dry cab is strait from my amp.

Scratching my head big time. I have made it to work but I think I could use some help to make it better. All effects are set 100% wet at the moment but routing and dry path gets me confused!!!!
 
This is sooo cool.

I would like to do this wdw setup but with my tube amp, so basically using the Axe as the effects processor and mixer, no amp sim or cabs. Just pure effects processor. I have a stereo power amp to power the wet cabs, two Mesa 2x12's.

Could this be done with the Axe only and no line mixer? How to add dry to the wet cabs? I have a line out box feeding the Axe. Dry cab is strait from my amp.

Scratching my head big time. I have made it to work but I think I could use some help to make it better. All effects are set 100% wet at the moment but routing and dry path gets me confused!!!!

You're correct, you don't need a separate line mixer to use WDW with these patches because full WDW functionality is built into the patch with the routing. The Axe-Fx is the only hardware you need besides the physical poweramps and cabs themselves.

The neat thing about this routing is that the post effects are essentially routed as if they already are plugged into a line mixer, but they are also routed so the wet signals from each block feeds into each effect block down the chain as well. This allows you to have independent control of each effect while also allowing things like delay to spill over into the reverb, or if you use pitch shift, the delay will produce pitch-shifted repeats, etc. instead of each effect only acting on the dry signal in isolation and nothing else. I've heard rigs where, for example, delay and reverb are used at the same time but the delay does not feed into the reverb so you have this big lush reverb echoing everywhere with bone-dry delay repeats echoing over the top of it, and that sounds strange to me. This patch fixes that.

First, let's just talk about post-effects. To use this patch with a real amp, instead of putting an Amp block in the patch, use the Input 4 block to route your real amp's Effects Send to the Axe-Fx:

2bZQcNT.png


If you want to use all the effects in this patch setup for the amp's input, route your setup like this:

X5LcTZH.png



CAUTION: If you're only routing the Axe-Fx as an effects loop device, you should be fine. However, if you route your real amp like this with the Axe-Fx providing before-the-amp effects and effects loop effects, you're going to get ground loop issues. To resolve those, you'll either need to use humbuster cables or isolation boxes on all of the Inputs and Output of the Axe-Fx.


As for your question about the post-effects, yes all post effects in this patch need to be set 100% wet mix for the patch to work. To control the volume of each effect, use the Level control, not the Mix control.
 
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You're correct, you don't need a separate line mixer to use WDW with these patches, the full WDW functionality is built into the patches themselves because of how everything is routed, so the Axe-Fx is the only hardware besides the physical poweramps and cabs themselves.

First, let's just talk about post-effects. To use this patch with a real amp, instead of putting an Amp block in the patch, use the Input 4 block to route your real amp's Effects Send to the Axe-Fx:

2bZQcNT.png


If you want to use all the effects in this patch setup for the amp's input, route your setup like this:

X5LcTZH.png



CAUTION: If you're only routing the Axe-Fx as an effects loop device, you should be fine. However, if you route your real amp like this with the Axe-Fx providing before-the-amp effects and effects loop effects, you're going to get ground loop issues. To resolve those, you'll either need to use humbuster cables or isolation boxes on all of the Inputs and Output of the Axe-Fx.


As for your question about the post-effects, yes all post effects in this patch need to be set 100% wet mix for the patch to work. To control the volume of each effect, use the Level control, not the Mix control.
go to link . admin explains.
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/wet-dry-wet.190814/page-2#post-2479721
 
You're correct, you don't need a separate line mixer to use WDW with these patches because full WDW functionality is built into the patch itself because of how everything is routed. The Axe-Fx is the only hardware you need besides the physical poweramps and cabs themselves.

The neat thing about this routing is that the post effects are essentially routed as if they already are plugged into a line mixer, but they are also routed so the wet signals from each block feeds into each effect block down the chain as well. This allows you to have independent control of each effect while also allowing things like delay to spill over into the reverb, or if you use pitch shift, the delay will produce pitch-shifted repeats, etc. instead of each effect only acting on the dry signal in isolation and nothing else. I've heard rigs where, for example, delay and reverb are used at the same time but the delay does not feed into the reverb so you have this big lush reverb echoing everywhere with bone-dry delay repeats echoing over the top of it, and that sounds strange to me. This patch fixes that.

First, let's just talk about post-effects. To use this patch with a real amp, instead of putting an Amp block in the patch, use the Input 4 block to route your real amp's Effects Send to the Axe-Fx:

2bZQcNT.png


If you want to use all the effects in this patch setup for the amp's input, route your setup like this:

X5LcTZH.png



CAUTION: If you're only routing the Axe-Fx as an effects loop device, you should be fine. However, if you route your real amp like this with the Axe-Fx providing before-the-amp effects and effects loop effects, you're going to get ground loop issues. To resolve those, you'll either need to use humbuster cables or isolation boxes on all of the Inputs and Output of the Axe-Fx.


As for your question about the post-effects, yes all post effects in this patch need to be set 100% wet mix for the patch to work. To control the volume of each effect, use the Level control, not the Mix control.

Ok, whoahh, lots of info here!!!!

Deadpool sent me on the right track and i got it going with being able to add some dry in my wet cabs via a vol block with an expression pedal controlling it ( the dry)

I will experiment with your templates too to see.

I will not be using the Axe for pre effects, i have an RJM rack gizmo for pre effects. So only using the Axe for post effects..

Will report!!!!

Thanks a lot for the tips🤘
 
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