Send and Return to External Fx?

[chowderdoof]

I'm excited by the possibility of the solaris external Ins and Outs but I'm a little confused.

I realise you can route audio and modulation data thru the synth it but is it possible to use the Ins and Outs as a fx send and return path as part of a patch and if so what's the best way to achieve this?

[amongstmyselves]

Something I have been meaning to try out myself. As far as I can tell they are not setup for effects loops though. Anyone else ?

steve

[John Bowen]

I'm excited by the possibility of the solaris external Ins and Outs but I'm a little confused.

I realise you can route audio and modulation data thru the synth it but is it possible to use the Ins and Outs as a fx send and return path as part of a patch and if so what's the best way to achieve this?

Hmmmm, interesting, but I don’t think it’s going to work exactly as you might expect....but you can try it. The External Audio inputs are routable, so it might be that you can get the results you are thinking - I’ll have to try it myself!
If you want the external FX to be at the very end of the sound chain, I think you might make it work - use a pair of outs other than 1/2 (if you’re using these as your main outs), then return into any of the Ext Ins, then assign the Ext Ins to the Outputs of 1/2.

One thing we don’t have that I wish we did was a boost for the External Inputs - we could use a 6-12 dB at times.

[chowderdoof]

Well after further investigation it can work but..

It seems to work better on fx with a mix knob as without any of dry signal you have to deal with the latency of the round trip to the fx and back - otherwise it seems to be pretty straightforward and quite useable.

Outs 1+2 = Ext 1+2 (monitor and fx return)
Out 3+4 = Synth (dry send)

I thought you needed to use Ext 1 + Ext 2 into a mixer to control the return levels but its going straight to monitor so I guess you don't have much control over the levels only thru the dry amount on fx mix knob.

I guess that means no modulation on the returns - And if you cant shape it with filters and stuff maybe a waste of time perhaps - Any ideas?

[John Bowen]

Well, you can route the External Inputs anywhere you want, but the sound will appear across all voices, so it’s not EXACTLY what you might expect to get...but sure, you can bring in the Ext Ins to a Mixer or Filter, and mess with it more. Depending on the patch, it could work...but it should appear in the dry synth outputs, so you could end up with a loop.

[chowderdoof]

I did try somthing like this - sending synth out to both 1+2 main outs and to 3+4 to the fx send and then combining the fx return back thru a mixer and filter to main outs . It did have a feedback loop but as the external in only trigger with note on it took a while to build up feedback and mosty with lots of held notes or sustain so it had a little bit of fx then if held too long crazy feedback but It was interesting and you could shape the return signal a little with envolopes and control the feedback somewhat.

[John Bowen]

Don’t forget the Envelope Follower - you can feed an external input to the EF, and use that to shape things.