Questions about external mixer for practice rig

d-flat

Member
Hi, hopefully this is the right place to ask about how I might set up the AxeFx3 in a practice rig with an external mixer. Three main components of practice rig (aside from guitar) would be

  1. AxeFx3 (+ FC-6)
  2. SingularSound Beat Buddy drum pedal
  3. Pigtronix Infinity Looper pedal
I currently don't have a mixer, and am tying these all together in special presets in the modeler. Routes are:
  • IN1 (back panel) fed by guitar
  • IN4 L+R fed by drum pedal L+R
  • OUT3 L+R feeding looper IN 1+2
  • IN3 L+R fed by looper OUT 1+2
  • OUT1 feeding headphones
I have yet to start experimenting with Input Split on the looper, so for now I just use both channels to record & playback stereo loops. It's also important to say I will listen to this rig pretty exclusively with headphones, I don't have a powered FRFR setup, and don't plan to get one any time soon.

Each of the looper presets has each of these inputs & outputs, which is one thing I'm hoping a mixer could help simplify. Immediately I could send the drum pedal to a stereo mixer channel, as I don't intend to record it to the looper. Most I would do to that signal is maybe throw a dash of compressor and a bit of reverb on it, if they were available on the mixer channel.

The part I'm trying to plan out is how to route the looper into the mixer. One thing I like to do pretty often is loop a chord progression or bass line and experiment with harmonizing over top of it using different channels / scenes. I suppose one routing setup could be to just send the axefx OUT1 L+R to the looper IN 1+2, and looper OUT 1+2 to a stereo mixer channel (or 2 normal channels panned). Main drawback there would be that the looper has a pretty terrible hiss when set at unity gain, it sounds a lot better when I set its master to noon and boost OUT to it from the axefx. Not sure how much the hiss would be reamplified if I were to keep axefx OUT1 level at zero and try to add the gain back in the mixer somehow. I'm also not too crazy about always sending the axefx out through the looper before it hits the mixer, but with this setup I could at least trim the presets down to using only IN1 and OUT1.

Second thought is whether I could use fx send / aux return busses to route signal to & from the looper. This is where my mixer knowledge gets pretty rusty, and one of the mixers I'm currently investigating is the Behringer X1204USB. It has 2 mono SENDs and a stereo RETURN for each. These correspond to 2 dials on each mixer channel (1+2), and 5 other dials in the master section for overall levels. Reading the manual, it seems that if you use bus 2 to patch in gear, then it disables the mixer's onboard effects, which is fine, because the most I would use that for would be a touch of reverb on the drum pedal, which I wouldn't mind going without.

I suppose one idea would be to have axefx OUT1 feed mixer channels 1+2 panned L+R. If I then route mixer AUX1 OUT to looper IN1, and mixer AUX2 OUT to looper IN2, couldn't I then have the looper OUT 1+2 feed mixer channels 3+4 panned L+R, with mixer channel 1's AUX1 dial set at about +10db or so (compensating for the looper hiss), and mixer channel 2's AUX2 dial set about the same? I would dial all other aux levels on these and other mixer channels to zero other than those 2 L+R sends. That routing configuration would give me wet axefx output on mixer channels 1+2/L+R, looper playback (or silence when not engaged) on mixer channels 3+4/L+R, right? I also considered bringing the looper back into the mixer's main aux returns as mono signals, and then dialing in the looper on the same mixer channels as the axefx (1+2), but I'm not sure how that would work out level-wise when I want to play over top of the loops.

One wrinkle is that I also like to use the same headphones when I play xbox, and it's a bit annoying to have to keep swapping the headphones between the practice rig and the home stereo receiver. I'm already converting the xbox optical audio out down to analog RCA, and again based on that Behringer model's manual, I think I could just patch that into the 2-TRACK input on the mixer to bring it into the headphone mix. The only other audio I would want to possibly bring in would come from my phone's headphone output jack, just so that I could hear notifications when I have it on the charger and not in my pocket.

The other thing I do with the current setup in just the axefx is record dry guitar to the looper, then play it back into a wet signal chain to dial in block channels (reamp). I don't usually spend a lot of time reamping from the looper to dial in or adjust tones, but I do like to do it a few times each practice session to keep things interesting. I think with an external mixer, I could just do reamping from the axefx's looper block instead of the pigtronix. I don't like using the looper block for wet signal though, as the pigtronix is much easier to control with the drum pedal.

Are there any other routing configurations or mixers that could be better for this kind of practice rig?
 
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I suppose one idea would be to have axefx OUT1 feed mixer channels 1+2 panned L+R. If I then route mixer AUX1 OUT to looper IN1, and mixer AUX2 OUT to looper IN2, couldn't I then have the looper OUT 1+2 feed mixer channels 3+4 panned L+R, with mixer channel 1's AUX1 dial set at about +10db or so (compensating for the looper hiss), and mixer channel 2's AUX2 dial set about the same? I would dial all other aux levels on these and other mixer channels to zero other than those 2 L+R sends. That routing configuration would give me wet axefx output on mixer channels 1+2/L+R, looper playback (or silence when not engaged) on mixer channels 3+4/L+R, right? I also considered bringing the looper back into the mixer's main aux returns as mono signals, and then dialing in the looper on the same mixer channels as the axefx (1+2), but I'm not sure how that would work out level-wise when I want to play over top of the loops.
this should work. currently you're using the Axe as the mixer. using a real mixer allows you to have the axe just be an axe, which immensely simplifies preset setup.
 
Thanks Chris, you were right. But I'm still not totally happy about how this turned out.

Went out and bought the mixer (a Behringer X1202USV) and wired it up the way I described. When trying to get it at levels I am used to listening on the axefx though, I noticed the same kind of background hiss that I was getting from the looper when I had it set to unity gain.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, or the headphone amplifier in the axefx is superior to the one in this mixer (or possibly a bit of both). I googled the hiss and found some things, but all of them talked about lowering levels received from the computer or installing new drivers for it. I get this hiss without even connecting the USB to the PC.

Any ideas? Is this probably just a case of an inferior headphone amp on the mixer? I've tried several things -- dialing up the levels from the input devices and turning the mixer input trims all the way down, turning up the input trims and lowering output levels on the devices, but I just can't seem to get the same kind of low noise I get when the headphones are being fed by the axefx.
 
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