Looper in series or parallel?

laxu

Fractal Fanatic
I've never been quite satisfied with the tones I was getting thru headphones or my desktop speakers (a pair of Magnat Quantum 603s thru an old Marantz amp). I normally use an Atomic FR and was happy with the tones I got thru that.

Then yesterday I started messing with the looper block, which I've had at the end of my fx chain (right before output) for a long time now and removed it by accident. Interestingly what happened was that my sound thru my speakers was a lot better (and clipping as there was a big level boost from removing the looper block). When I turned the levels down to what they were before removing the looper, I still experienced a much beefier sound despite the volume meters on my Echo Audiofire 4 looking to output the same levels. My Axe-Fx 2 Mk I is connected via SPDIF to the Echo so I have easy level monitoring and don't need extra cables to hook to the audio system.

I traced this back to the mix control in the looper block, it was set at around 48%. However, this seemed to mean that if the looper block is enabled (and AFAIK it should be as otherwise it would be hard to use via my FCB1010) then even if it's not used I am outputting a lower level as the mix control at 0 is all original sound and 100% is all looped sound.

What I then did was set the looper block parallel to my normal chain, turned mix to 100% and controlled the looped sound with the looper block level control. This seemed to work fine as the sound was good when I wasn't using the looper and I got the looped sound at the right volume in the mix.

Can anyone explain to me why this works better, why the looper sucked my tone and if I'm doing something wrong?
 
Not sure I can explain the result, but I have been using the Looper in parallel at the end of my signal chain for 2+ years just as you described and it works great for me.

It's quite possible I found the same issue and that's how I ended up with it in parallel, but I honestly don't remember :rolleyes:
 
even the looper block is at %50 mix it sucks out some dBs, it might be the reason you had it on %48 to compancate and probably you need to lower the mix even more to get the same signal level as it would be the without the looper block or it being bypassed. but it should not change the tone. still what comes in goes out...can it be the louder signal making you think it sounds better?
 
even the looper block is at %50 mix it sucks out some dBs, it might be the reason you had it on %48 to compancate and probably you need to lower the mix even more to get the same signal level as it would be the without the looper block or it being bypassed. but it should not change the tone. still what comes in goes out...can it be the louder signal making you think it sounds better?

That's why I found it strange because I matched the levels to what my audio interface shows and there was a difference in tone even though both seemed to hit roughly the same levels.
 
The looper doesn't alter the dry tone, only its level. Likely explanations are placebo effect or not matching previous volume closely enough. Now that you've reduced level to avoid clipping, try looper in series at 50% mix, +3 dB level for an accurate comparison.
 
Back
Top Bottom