Gapless switching questions

H

haloll

Inspired
I have a couple of quick questions around gapless switching. Trying to build my own presets and want to make sure I follow the best practices here. I already know about using the two amp blocks to get true gapless amp switching, what I’m more interested in is all of the other blocks.

1) Besides the amp block, what other block types do not have gapless switching? I would assume the drive block since it oversamples, and maybe the cab block or compressor as well?

2) I’m assuming true gapless switching will heavily push me towards using scenes for all switching instead of individual pedals? IE say I had two drive sounds I wanted to switch between, I would have to use scenes to control the multiplexer that determines which drive is active? Or is there a way I can make input 1 on its own footswitch, input 2 on its own footswitch, and moreso mimic a traditional pedal stomp setup?
 
You're talking about channel switching. Switching blocks on or off is always gapless.

Whether a channel is changed by a scene or manually makes no difference.

As to your question about drive blocks: the Axe-Fx III has enough DSP power to run more than one, and you do NOT need to use a multiplexer for this. Just run them in series and let the scene turn things on or off as you need. Personally, I'm fine with the sound of channel changes on the drive block, and so in general are the best and most discriminating players I support. Listen before you leap.

When you change the channel on a reverb or delay, the data in the delay line memory will be processed by the new settings, so listen to your scene changes there and use multiple blocks if needed.

I think the best thing to do is start by building the tones you need, then listen and work to identify and address anything you don't like. Don't waste time proactively trying to prevent problems that might not even exist.
 
Admin M@ said:
You're talking about channel switching. Switching blocks on or off is always gapless.

Whether a channel is changed by a scene or manually makes no difference.

As to your question about drive blocks: the Axe-Fx III has enough DSP power to run more than one, and you do NOT need to use a multiplexer for this. Just run them in series and let the scene turn things on or off as you need. Personally, I'm fine with the sound of channel changes on the drive block, and so in general are the best and most discriminating players I support. Listen before you leap.

When you change the channel on a reverb or delay, the data in the delay line memory will be processed by the new settings, so listen to your scene changes there and use multiple blocks if needed.

I think the best thing to do is start by building the tones you need, then listen and work to identify and address anything you don't like. Don't waste time proactively trying to prevent problems that might not even exist.
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Got it, makes sense. Currently I have the axe fx 3, but I’m thinking of getting a fm3 to use at rehearsals so that I don’t have to keep lugging my 3 out and disconnecting/reconnecting it to home gear before/after each rehearsal, which is more where I think this would come into play.

Here’s maybe a more practical example of why I’m curious about channel switching gaps. Say I have a preset with a compressor block before the amp with two different compressors and one block after the amp as a more mastering style compressor. On the 3 it would be easy, just have 2 compressors before the amp and turn on/off to switch sounds. With the FM3 though, you only get two blocks so I’d need to use channels to switch. If everything but the amp gets gapless channel switching then this isn’t an issue, but if it isn’t gapless, then I need to either find a way to consolidate to 1 compressor setting or maybe use the multi band compressor for one of the sounds instead.

Another example might be using drive blocks with parallel processing for bass. Maybe there’s a DI path for bass that has a drive block with subtle tape distortion on the DI signal for a bit of warmth, and then a path that has two different b7k signals. With the fx3, I can just use 3 drive blocks, but with the fm3 I’d need to use channel switching.

For the fm3 I think scene controllers would also allow gapless “channel” switching by letting me control up to 4 parameters on a single channel for either of the above scenarios, so I’d only need to actually switch channels if I needed to change more than 4 things?

The main motivation here is trying to figure out what block types have gaps when switching channels so I know which blocks need scene controllers and which blocks can just use channels no issue.
 
It all depends on the specific preset of course, but for non-amp blocks the gap is usually so small that you'll notice the sudden change of timbre more than a gap. But Matt's right, it's probably not worthwhile trying to guess in advance what will sound ok to you.
 
GlennO said:
It all depends on the specific preset of course, but for non-amp blocks the gap is usually so small that you'll notice the sudden change of timbre more than a gap. But Matt's right, it's probably not worthwhile trying to guess in advance what will sound ok to you.
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Makes sense. Essentially what I was trying to do is validate my rough algorithm of using channels for all non-amp blocks and reserving the scene controllers for the amp block itself, which would ensure gapless switching for up to 4 amp parameters.

Is there a technical reason we are limited to 4 scene controllers? They seem extremely powerful, so having more would be great.
 
Only Cliff can answer the "why". But the UI Fractal uses probably wouldn't scale very well to much more than that anyway. The more conventional way it's done on the Helix permits larger numbers, but there are pros and cons.
 
GlennO said:
Only Cliff can answer the "why". But the UI Fractal uses probably wouldn't scale very well to much more than that anyway. The more conventional way it's done on the Helix permits larger numbers, but there are pros and cons.
Click to expand...

I had a helix before, I personally prefer the channel approach where I can build each channel individually as opposed to having to build each scene separately. Blocks library is also amazing.

I’m not sure I’d necessarily ever need more than 4 scene controllers, I’m moreso just surprised it only has 4. With how much power the fx3 has I figured it would be higher. Like unless I throw fullres IRs on I’m basically never running into cpu issues on the 3 (non turbo mk2).

I had a bit of a weird idea for how to solve seamless amp switching for if you want one amp model with 4 sounds, but it would require a new block. The basic idea is that it’s a new amp single block where you pick a single model, and then the channels basically act as just massive banks of scene controllers to swap all of the parameters. This is so radically different than the typical channel behavior though that I could see this not working architecturally for the modeling engine. My understanding is that you need to mute when switching channels because of pops/clicks/noise when swapping amp models, so locking a block to a single model would remove the requirement to mute between channel swaps. But I could be totally wrong here.
 
Yes, I've suggested that in the past. If you have two amp block channels, and they share the same amp type, it should be possible for the software, when changing channels, to recognize this as a special case and morph any differing parameter values from one channel to the other without the gap...the same as if you were changing those parameters interactively. But I'm sure that would be more far more complex to implement than the current approach of "clear the decks and load the new channel".
 
Keep in mind you do have different channels for Scene Controllers too, greatly increasing your possibilities. I exclusively use Multiplexers and Scene Controllers for my multi tone presets to keep them gapless. I do not switch channels on drive blocks or amp blocks. I’ve found you can sometimes switch gaplessly between channels, but it’s very model dependent; on the other hand, the multiplexers and scene controllers (when damping is adjusted for each modifier) always switch utterly gaplessly.

I’ve written a lot about gapless switching in different threads, and if it might help at all, you might find some of this thread, where I lay out some of my approach, useful:

Thread 'My construction of Gapless Presets'
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/my-construction-of-gapless-presets.176655/
 
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