H9000 Mix level issues / mix level concept

[homer]

Hi,

Just bought a H9000 and while I am impressed with all the possibilities it offers it seems like I am unable to get the simplest things done when it comes to mix levels.

I am a guitarist and I would like to use the H9000 in a stereo setup (Diezel Vh4 stereo). The amp has a parallel and a series loop, with a mono send and two returns for each loop.

Ideally I would like to run the H9000 in the parallel loop to have the pure, unconverted analog signal mixed with the 100% wet signal. That should work out if you set the mix level to 100% and use the mix level controls on my amp. The problem is that the latency of the AD/DA conversion of the H9000 will lead to phase and comb filtering issues when the dry and wet signal are mixed again on their way back in.

That leaves me only with the option to use the serial loop and have the wet/dry level adjusted inside the H9000. Now here the trouble starts. While its not hard to grasp what FX chain and Algorithm mix levels are doing, it seems like in
Hi,

Just bought a H9000 and while I am impressed with all the possibilities it offers it seems like I am unable to get the simplest things done when it comes to the topic of setting the correct mix levels.

I am a guitarist and I would like to use the H9000 in a stereo setup (Diezel Vh4 stereo). The amp has a parallel and a series loop, with a mono send and two returns for each loop. I route Analog 1 to both Input 1 & 2 of the Fx chain therefore.

Ideally I would like to run the H9000 in the parallel loop to have the pure, unconverted analog signal mixed with the 100% wet signal. I set the mix level in the H9000 to 100% and use the parallel loop mix level controls on my amp to adjust the ratio.

The problem is that the latency of the AD/DA conversion of the H9000 will lead to phase and comb filtering issues when the dry and wet signal are mixed again on their way back in. That leaves me only with the option to use the serial loop and have the wet/dry level adjusted inside the H9000. Now here the trouble starts.

My first impression is that even with 50% mix level the amount of wet signal seems to be way too high still. While at 20% it feels about right the overall signal level drops significantly. So I change the Fx chain mix level back to 100% and try to adjust the individual Algorithm mix level to 50% in order to see if that makes a difference.

Now here is the rub. If I adjust the mix on the Algo level I will need to adjust the mix level each time I call up another preset within the fx chain slot. To be honest I feel like concept may need some revision because it would require me to copy my preferred presets just to have the correct levels set in any case.

Still that doesn’t solve the issue of the accumulated mix levels being way too high. At the moment I am running the fx chain mix level at 50% and the individual preset mix level between 20-30% to have a result that comes close to my old H8000 with 50% global level. Anyway, I don’t think that this is way it should be.

It would be great if somebody could explain on how to do it right since at moment I am close to sending the unit back. I would also appreciate if someone could clarify where in the signal flow the different mix level controls are located.

Thx

[homer]

Sorry for the long post. There was a network issue so I had to copy and paste a whole block and that obviously went wrong.

[jfirlik]

Sorry to hear you're having trouble with the setup — there are a lot of factors at play here so let me see if I can help.

homer wrote:

Ideally I would like to run the H9000 in the parallel loop to have the pure, unconverted analog signal mixed with the 100% wet signal. That should work out if you set the mix level to 100% and use the mix level controls on my amp. The problem is that the latency of the AD/DA conversion of the H9000 will lead to phase and comb filtering issues when the dry and wet signal are mixed again on their way back in.

You are right that this type of parallel setup is going to be difficult, as typically this would require some sort of latency compensation on the dry signal.  However it really depends on the types of algorithms being used, for instance many of the H9-series algorithms (which are more tailored towards guitar) in the 9000+ banks have a 'Kill Dry' feature that would allow you to use them in a parallel loop.  In general, reverbs, delays, and pitch shifters are going to work best because the effected signal will be de-correlated enough to avoid comb filtering.

homer wrote:

 My first impression is that even with 50% mix level the amount of wet signal seems to be way too high still. While at 20% it feels about right the overall signal level drops significantly. So I change the Fx chain mix level back to 100% and try to adjust the individual Algorithm mix level to 50% in order to see if that makes a difference.

This is a common problem with guitar signals due to the natural compression of most amplifiers.  The H9 algs taper their internal mix control so the 0-50% range has more resolution on the knob for this reason.  The built-in mix controls on the H9000 will mix in wet signal from 0-50, and then mix out the dry signal from 50-100, so for certain effects this may cause slight gain differences throughout the range, but these can be compensated for using the algorithm or FX chain gain controls.  Note that this gain structure is slightly different than the H8000 which may account for small differences at the same nominal settings.

homer wrote:

 Now here is the rub. If I adjust the mix on the Algo level I will need to adjust the mix level each time I call up another preset within the fx chain slot. To be honest I feel like concept may need some revision because it would require me to copy my preferred presets just to have the correct levels set in any case.

We have encountered this issue and think it could be solved if we implemented a 'Mix Lock' that would keep your current setting across preset loads.  We definitely think this would be a useful feature and are considering scheduling it for our next major release.

homer wrote:

 It would be great if somebody could explain on how to do it right since at moment I am close to sending the unit back. I would also appreciate if someone could clarify where in the signal flow the different mix level controls are located.

The FX chain mix controls are external to the FX chain, meaning that the dry signal from the input channel 1 will be passed through to output channel 1, etc.  For more complex routing scenarios this would probably not be appropriate because it will bypass any routing done within the FX chain, but it could work for a mono guitar signal as a simple 'overall mix'.  In general the algorithm controls will give you greater control as these are internal to the FX chain and maintain the routing structure.  I'm not sure if there is necessarily a "right" way to do it, but I do think in a guitar setup it's normal to have mix values that seem a bit low, due to the inherent compression both in the amp and the speaker cab.

[homer]

Thanks for the reply and sorry for getting back late. I just wanted to let you know that I returned my H9000.

Like I mentioned, while I do get the point that a parallel setup is not going to work in my case, I found it to be too difficult to set all the parameters in different locations correctly to make it work even in the serial setup with the correct mix levels.

In the end it would have been a combination of setting the right fx chain and preset mix level plus individual gain on the presets to make it work. Unfortunately I think there are no tools yet within the OS to deal with this effectively and elegantly. Even if I consider saving my presets with modified mix/gain levels that would fit guitar I would need to do the same for presets I want to use with my synth and so on.

Something annoying while going through the presets is in fact that there are enormous difference in levels of a magnitude, which I dont recall from any of my older Eventide units. Apart from this I miss a proper analog stage to control the input levels and to be honest, I was also expecting to see some new FX but in fact it is mostly a H8000 with better routing and interfacing options for now.

While I can see the potential and some good ideas here and there I feel some of the concepts could need some overhauling and definitely the unit would need to offer somethin on the FX side which sets it apart from the H8000 IMHO. anyway thx for the support. Keep up the good work.

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