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:
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:
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:
Three W/D/W effects blocks:
Four W/D/W effects blocks:
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:
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:
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?
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.
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.
Patch Download: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=10343
Patch Download: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=10344
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:
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:
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:
Three W/D/W effects blocks:
Four W/D/W effects blocks:
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:
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:
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?
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.
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.
Patch Download: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=10343
Patch Download: https://axechange.fractalaudio.com/detail.php?preset=10344
Last edited: