H90 pedalboard advice

[joshuacwhalen]

Hey gang! I’m hoping to draw upon your collective experience and wisdom. My main rig for awhile has been IR-X into Ox Stomp into H90. Both live and in studio this has been the happiest ever direct. First time I personally feel as inspired direct as with my amp rig. I want to expand this direct setup and hoping to get some advice on routing. I currently use morning star for midi, but might ditch that for now and use H90 as I only really use simple PC changes. I was thinking of adding an HX one for pre IRX effects mostly just drives, Fuzz, Boosts that kind of thing. I’d also like to add an illumine or mercury X at the tail end for reverb. My first though is too do dual mono insert with IRX + Ox Stomp in one loop and HX One in another. That way I can occasionally use H90 pitch and synth effects very first in the chain as well as taking IRX out of chain when I use the board with keyboard or as outboard in DAW. My main concern is latency. I’m not super sensitive to it, but do record and perform professionally, so there is a point when it becomes an issue for certain situations. I’m not brainy enough to calculate the total latency. In you experience is this asking too much. I could also just run everything inline, but not sure how pitch and synth works post distortion vs pre distortion. I’d really like to experiment more with those effects. I’ve used em post distortion and seems to sound great to me. I should probably just try em pre and experiment, but I figure a lot of people here have experience and insight.

 

thanks so much!

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[tbskoglund]

Hello,

Whether or not the latency is an issue is mostly up to the player and if it bothers them. If you say that you are not sensitive to it, then my best suggestion is to try it out and see if you like it.

Typically, pitch based effects are placed pre distortion as that will ensure the tracking is working best, but there is nothing wrong with using them post distortion if that works for you.

You seem to have a good grasp of your options and how everything could potentially work, so I would highly suggest doing some experimenting on your own and figuring out what works for your setup.

[apalazzolo]

I think trade offs abound and these questions are largely unique to each user/use.  So I’m not sure I can say anything that you don’t already know but …

Before the H90 I never went direct and used headphones/amp sims modestly.  Since the H90 I’m using (stereo) insert mode amp sims all the time and mostly headphones.  After trying various things, I settled on a drive, a compressor/eq, and an exciter (all analog) before my H90.

I find the insert functionality/flexibility absurdly useful (simply moving the amp sim in the chain).  So I’m comfortable paying what I think of as a latency penalty for it (3.8ms IIRC).  But I still have enough latency-anxiety that I decided my only digital pedals will be my H90 and one UAFX amp sim (about 2.3ms of latency).  This, in turn, has led me to try to squeeze as much as I can out of my H90.  That balance has been a great one for me and it gets better with every new algo b/c the H90 does more.

I also have a three button aux switch and I’m surprised at how much I’m using that.  The interplay between the aux and hot switches can be really powerful.

That IRX looks like a great unit and I hear it (1) has midi; and (2) only has about 1ms of latency.  If I had one I would definitely ditch the MC6 and control a few IRX presets using H90 program change commands between songs.

Good luck and please let us know what you find works for you and what doesn’t.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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