Let’s say you have 4 mono FX buses, and 4 stereo FX buses. All routed in the order from mono to stereo into the first 8 FX units, basically like a default routing.
Now you change the config so that you have 2 mono FX buses.
My intuitive logic tells me that FX units 3 and 4 should now have inputs and outputs unassigned.
What happens instead is all the FX sends are moved by 2 units. So what was previously sent to FX unit 5, is now sent to 3, 6 to 4 and so on. Yes, I could just copy FX5 settings to 3, 6 to 4, 7 to 5 and so on… but like… why not just unassign them and keep the routings you allready have? Especcially, when you have very limited time to reconfigure the console to meet a demand for 2 additional mono aux buses, but can only sacrifice 2 mono FX buses, and then find that your FX sounds are totally different and you wonder why?
So I hope this here is a suggestion of how FX buses could maybe be handled? If for some reason it’s not a good idea - meaning there is a reason to be the way it is - then why?
Have you tried using regular Aux sends instead of the dedicated FX sends? The system is robust enough to allow FX racks to get their signal from regular aux sends and the aux sends have more processing available on them. You can also assign an aux send to ANY FX rack - unlike the FX sends that can only be assigned to the first X number of FX racks (where X=the total number of FX busses you have created).
I have no idea if the system would handle things the same way with the Aux sends vs the FX sends when it comes to “deleting” aux/FX busses. Unfortunately I suspect it will, but it is worth checking out just to be sure.
PS - there is really no reason to feed any of the FX racks with a stereo FX/aux send IMHO. It’s my understanding that the FX themselves are not true stereo (“stereo” FX are really two channels of identical mono FX) and therefore you are just wasting buss capacity by sending them a stereo send.
Good point about using just the auxes. Also, while using auxes, even if you delete them, they just become unavailable and won’t reorder… at least as much as I was able to test different approaches now.
So basically it’s the same old question of, why do we need FX Send buses anyway? At least in this implementation I see too many issues.
i’d sugest an alternative approach - two sets of ‘auxes’ - so you could maintain the order in fx routings and have channel processing, and when you delete from one set, the other remains intact. You could have the second set sent to fx buses by default.
Yeah, I don’t know why A&H implemented FX send busses like they did. I mean I understand wanting to have different FX sends that would be separated from the normal auxes. It’s honestly a little cumbersome managing all of the auxes when some are “normal” auxes and some are “FX” auxes and I would rather not have to use regular auxes for FX sends. But why they neutered they FX send busses so much (and unnecessarily IMHO), I have no idea.