How to hookup TC Electronic M350 Reverb and Effects Processor

[tedanderson]

the old tape reverb trick was accomplished by feeding back some of the reproducer head's output, as the machine was recording, back into the record head.

This is probably the reason why reel-to-reel machines are hard to come by at a cheap price.

[rbflapjack]

I know this is very late for this thread but this topic came up on a Google search. We have an A&L GL2400 and I would like to add a reverb for the vocals. I don't think the 2400 has aux return so I was planning on using Aux 5 for the send and returning to a spare channel. My question is about the fader on the original channel. For example, I have four vocalists on channels 1-4. I am going to send all four (at different levels) to aux 5 (the reverb unit) and return to channel 20. Then I would control the vocal level in the master mix with the channel 20 fader. My question is what do the faders do for the original vocal channels 1-4? I thought that I would make aux 5 a pre-fade send and leave the faders at zero. Then I would control the individual vocal levels with the aux 5 send knobs and the overall vocals with the channel 20 fader. However, in this post, they said to run the aux send post-fade and control the individual channels with their faders. However, wouldn't that be sending non-reverb signal to the master mix? Boy, writing this makes it sound complicated but I hope that it makes sense. Basically wondering if I should use the original faders. Thanks.

[waynehoskins]

Originally Posted by rbflapjack

I know this is very late for this thread but this topic came up on a Google search. We have an A&L GL2400 and I would like to add a reverb for the vocals. I don't think the 2400 has aux return so I was planning on using Aux 5 for the send and returning to a spare channel. My question is about the fader on the original channel. For example, I have four vocalists on channels 1-4. I am going to send all four (at different levels) to aux 5 (the reverb unit) and return to channel 20. Then I would control the vocal level in the master mix with the channel 20 fader. My question is what do the faders do for the original vocal channels 1-4? I thought that I would make aux 5 a pre-fade send and leave the faders at zero. Then I would control the individual vocal levels with the aux 5 send knobs and the overall vocals with the channel 20 fader. However, in this post, they said to run the aux send post-fade and control the individual channels with their faders. However, wouldn't that be sending non-reverb signal to the master mix? Boy, writing this makes it sound complicated but I hope that it makes sense. Basically wondering if I should use the original faders. Thanks.

If your effects processor has a wet/dry mix knob, your technique would work, but it's not the best way. The way we generally do things is set the effects processors entirely "wet" -- meaning that the output of the processor contains only the new effect, the reverberation, with no original sound -- and then mix the dry channels and wet returns on the console. This makes mixing the vocals themselves very convenient since they're on faders rather than knobs, and it's just better anyway. You may also want your lead vocal to be drier than the backup vocals, which is easy to do the conventional way but impossible the other way.

[rbflapjack]

That makes sense. I don't have much experience with seperate effects units so I thought you only wanted to push the full effect signal to the main mix. This makes more sense

[titus3]

Originally Posted by tedanderson

Connect Aux sends 5 and 6 from your mixer to inputs 1 and 2 of the effects processor using a pair of 1/4" cables. Secondly use another pair of 1/4" cables to go from outputs 1 and 2 on the effects processor to the last two channels of your mixing console. Being that the 24-4 has "double" channel at the end of the console you will connect your effects outputs to channels 21 and 23 so that you can control the effects returns independently.

The Mackie 24-4 also has dedicated "EFX Return" inputs but I prefer to run the returns through a spare channel so that that you can adjust the EQ if necessary.

With it being set up in this manner you can program separate effects.. say you want a delay on one side of the effects unit and you want reverb on the other, you can then dial it in on Aux 5 and 6 on the console for each channel or you can give any channel BOTH effects.

Also, I suggested that the use of Aux 5 & 6 because they are post fader so if you turn someone down, you won't continue to get their mic through the effects return.

Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but had a question regarding the assignment of the efx channel. If the vocals are being assigned to subgroup 1 on a Mackie Onyx 4 do we have to assign the efx channel to the subgroup also or can we leave it assigned to the main mix? Hope this makes sense.