Effects Ordering In Guitarix

All your LV2 and LADSPA goodness and more.

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Post Reply
Natelok
Established Member
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:18 pm
Location: Donnybrook Western Australia
Has thanked: 78 times
Been thanked: 14 times

Effects Ordering In Guitarix

Post by Natelok »

Hi all. Long time lurker, new poster.

I've been learning my way around guitarix and I have a question about effects/tonestack ordering. It seems that some effects need to be placed before the pre-amp section, some between the preamp and amp and/or cabinet model, and some after the speaker cabinet.

For example, the DS1 distortion seems to have little effect if placed before the pre-amp, but the tubescreamer works better before the pre-amp. The ds1 seems to work best after the cabinet emulation.

What I'm wondering is, is there a guide anywhere to what goes where, or do I just need to move stuff around until I'm happy?

I made a bunch of "Amp model, clean tone with deactivated distortion effect" patches this evening, but I'm having trouble understanding where things go. It doesn't quite match up with my real world experience. Another example is that compression seems to be most effective at the end of the chain, whereas my pedal board would have compression right after distortion effects.

I seem to have worked out volume leveling so that switching effects or presets give consistent output (although at one stage, the Amp head and the FX sections both connected to the outputs, so I had spent ages working on levels before realising that it was hooked up weird and my volumes dropped about 80%.

All of that said, I have been repeatedly stunned at how accurate the emulation is. All that gear I sold over the years is back! And I can fit my whole rig in a briefcase. Guitarix is seriously good software, and the extras in gxplugins are also very good. I had a Mess Bottlerocket years ago, I turned Hermanns plugin on and there it was, like it had ever left.

Hermann, that reverse delay is mental, Just BTW. I spent an hour noodling with it, it's given me some interesting ideas.

But any advise on ordering would be greatly appreciate. At this stage, I'm mostly concerned with the standalone program, but advise on ordering plugins in Carla or directly in Ardour are also welcome.

Thanks

Nate
Nate!

Music Nerd, Guitarist, Fixer of Things, DJ, currently employed by Donnybrook Balingup Community Radio (Station Manager & Drive Time DJ, Recording Engineer for a small attached studio for local artists)

DAW: Mixbus at home, Mixbus32C at work
User avatar
milo
Established Member
Posts: 1242
Joined: Wed Sep 06, 2017 2:55 am
Location: Southern Utah, USA
Has thanked: 275 times
Been thanked: 218 times
Contact:

Re: Effects Ordering In Guitarix

Post by milo »

This is discussed at some length in a nice write-up on Guitarix at LibreMusicProduction: https://libremusicproduction.com/articl ... d-guitarix.

The short answer is, yes, it is subjective. But there are some "best practices." Some effects are generally used on the preamp (eg compression, wah, distortion), and others are generally used after the amp (eg reverb, delay).
Natelok
Established Member
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:18 pm
Location: Donnybrook Western Australia
Has thanked: 78 times
Been thanked: 14 times

Re: Effects Ordering In Guitarix

Post by Natelok »

Alrighty then. Thanks for the response. I've read all of the documentation I could find, which got me this far. I guess I'll just keep playing with it, and I might even try to write up whatever I come up with.

Oh well, off to fiddle with guitarix!
Nate!

Music Nerd, Guitarist, Fixer of Things, DJ, currently employed by Donnybrook Balingup Community Radio (Station Manager & Drive Time DJ, Recording Engineer for a small attached studio for local artists)

DAW: Mixbus at home, Mixbus32C at work
Post Reply