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In the good old days of amp combos and heads, parallel effect loops would let you add effects to the sound with no impact on the amp tone itself. As opposed to series effect loops, where the entire signal is processed by the effects device and therefore subject to the quality of that device. Preserving tone integrity was the holy grail.
With the Axe-Fx there's no need anymore to use parallel paths to preserve tone integrity. There's no tonal difference between a signal going through a delay in series and a direct signal combined with a separate signal going through a delay in a parallel path. It's all digital, remember?
Still, there are useful applications for creating parallel paths. Such as:
Split the signal to a separate row (1 or more) above or below the main one, add blocks or shunts to the rows, and merge the paths again. Merging is not necessary, but two long rows connected to the output on the grid may use more CPU cycles than a merged row (shunts use CPU).
A couple of important notes.
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With the Axe-Fx there's no need anymore to use parallel paths to preserve tone integrity. There's no tonal difference between a signal going through a delay in series and a direct signal combined with a separate signal going through a delay in a parallel path. It's all digital, remember?
Still, there are useful applications for creating parallel paths. Such as:
- Ability to add an effect to work on effect trails only. For example, adding a tremolo to delay trails to emulate a TC Electronic 2290, or adding a Phaser to those trails (see factory preset Fazed Delay), or gating a Reverb, etc.
- Ability to adjust the amount of effect level without affecting the direct signal. With effects in series, adjusting the Mix parameter will not just change the effects level, but it impacts the level of the direct signal as well. Note: with the release of firmware 11, the Mix value does not affect the dry signal (up to 50%).
- Ability to put more effect blocks in a preset than when having everything in series in one row.
- Ability to make sure that there's no reverb applied to delay trails.
- Ability to use two amps in a preset, with one set to use power amp modeling, and the other without.
Split the signal to a separate row (1 or more) above or below the main one, add blocks or shunts to the rows, and merge the paths again. Merging is not necessary, but two long rows connected to the output on the grid may use more CPU cycles than a merged row (shunts use CPU).
A couple of important notes.
- It's not useful to put 100% "wet" effects in parallel paths. Think of Tremolo and Compressor. These kind of effects need to operate on the entire signal, except when they are used to work on a preceding effect.
- Splitting a row doesn't affect signal level. But summing parallel rows (on the grid or in the output mixer) does. Just like two cabinets, fed by one amplifier, will sound louder than one. More information about dBs (source: GM Arts).
- You can work around doubling signal level. In effect blocks in the parallel path, set Mix at 100% and use Level to dial in the desired amount of effect. Or set Mix at 100%, Level at 0 dB and use Input Gain to dial in the amount of effect. If Level is very high, overall volume may still increase.
- When bypassing effects in the parallel row, the overall signal level may change (because of summing multiple signals. You can work around that. In effect blocks in the parallel path, set Bypass Mode to Mute In or Mute Out. Do not use Thru or Mix 0%, in order to avoid doubling the signal level.
To get a list of all Wicked Wiki threads: type "Wicked Wiki" in the Search box.
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