Mixing Analog and Digital Pedals

[James Freeman]

What do you think about mixing analog and digital pedals on one board?
Are you a purist, Analog+True Bypass or GTFO?
Digital pedals are okay as long as they have true bypass so I can still maintain pure analog signal path?
Do you have a red line you don't cross or some kind of personal guideline?

My latest acquisitions got me thinking, CH-1, BF-3, Strymon, all these are digital, the signal goes through AD/DA stages.
Is it even worth further chasing analog signal path when you have even one digital pedal? Might as well go full DSP and be done with it?

I want to know your opinion on this.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

What do you think about mixing analog and digital pedals on one board?
Are you a purist, Analog+True Bypass or GTFO?
Digital pedals are okay as long as they have true bypass so I can still maintain pure analog signal path?
Do you have a red line you don't cross or some kind of personal guideline?

My latest acquisitions got me thinking, CH-1, BF-3, Strymon, all these are digital, the signal goes through AD/DA stages.
Is it even worth further chasing analog signal path when you have even one digital pedal? Might as well go full DSP and be done with it?

I want to know your opinion on this.

depends what you’re trying to achieve but generally individual pedals lend themselves to dedicated controls. I prefer analog for drives/fuzz, compression and bucket brigade fx, digital for delays and reverbs and weird stuff. I wouldn’t really think too much about how the sound is achieved if it delivers what you want. embrace the quirks and limitations of each as a feature.

 

[Jarick]

So I just got a bunch of analog drive pedals in and I’m comparing to digital versions. Compared to Hx Stomp I prefer the analog drives more, they seem more dynamic and bigger and stack nicely. Compared to Fractal they are much closer. Haven’t compared to QC yet.

From a pedalboard standpoint, I would ideally go with analog for fuzz, drive, compression, etc. And digital for things like delay, reverb, modulation. That seems common for a lot of pedal user who have analog pedals into Strymon and what not.

 

[Blix]

Which Strymon? Many of them has analog dry

But yeah I'm fine with digital pedals as long the dry is analog.

 

[SillyOctpuss]

I'm definitely in the Analog front end and digital in the loop camp these days. I love my fuzz pedals and don't like what happens to the sound if I run them through a digital pedal with no analog dry through.

My stomp's basically only used for reverb and the retro reel effect in the loop these days.

 

[maguchi]

What do you think about mixing analog and digital pedals on one board?
Are you a purist, Analog+True Bypass or GTFO?
Digital pedals are okay as long as they have true bypass so I can still maintain pure analog signal path?
Do you have a red line you don't cross or some kind of personal guideline?

My latest acquisitions got me thinking, CH-1, BF-3, Strymon, all these are digital, the signal goes through AD/DA stages.
Is it even worth further chasing analog signal path when you have even one digital pedal? Might as well go full DSP and be done with it?

I want to know your opinion on this.

Not really. Never gave it much thought before yet. If I like the sound of the pedal by itself, I'll put it on the board regardless of whatever else is on there. I usually only use one pedal at a time anyways. If multiple pedals sound off together, I twist some knobs to get them to sound better. I like to listen to the sound instead of using scientific theories that I don't understand, less aggravation that way. Many pedals nowadays are either buffered or have bypass anyways. So to answer the original question, ain't no thang.

 

[spawnofthesith]

My board is a combination of things I like in both camps

True bypass is overrated imo. If you have a huge board of all trye bypass pedals your tone is gonna suffer...

 

[laxu]

My board has only two analog pedals. A Boss Fuzz and the Strymon Compadre compressor/boost.

All the Strymon/Source Audio digital pedals have very low latency so turning even all of them on is not an issue. Most are set for true bypass too.

IMO the A/D/A conversion with modern pedals is a total non-issue.

 

[laxu]

So I just got a bunch of analog drive pedals in and I’m comparing to digital versions. Compared to Hx Stomp I prefer the analog drives more, they seem more dynamic and bigger and stack nicely. Compared to Fractal they are much closer. Haven’t compared to QC yet.

HX Stomp might be different, but I found I could get the Helix Floor drives to sound exactly like some of the pedals I had at the time, like the Keeley D&M Drive (Klon+OCD). Sold the Keeley because I felt the Helix did its job. I was running into a tube amp and tried the pedals in Helix loops as well as direct to amp input. From what I remember they stacked fine too.

I'd check if simply increasing the output level of the drives on Helix solves the problem. In my experience most of my "Helix doesn't sound as good" problems were with input/output levels more than anything.

 

[itchyfingers]

My only concern with a digital pedal is feeding it proper power. I think the use of digital pedals was more of a concern a couple decades ago. Like a DL-4 would give you killer delay sounds but you could hear that you had a DL-4 because of its now-seemingly-archaic D/A conversion. Modern digital pedals like Strymons, L6, TC Electronic, etc are way more transparent these days, IME.

 

[FuzzyAce]

I don't have a problem mixing both. Typically I'd use a digital verb and delay end of chain, sometimes a digital flanger or filter (via Bitquest). But most are analog like drives, wah, vibe, compressor. I could see where stacking a big chain of digital effects might cause some noticeable latency, but I guess it depends on the design of each.

 

[EOengineer]

I’ve experimented a lot with this subject the last few years and can share some thoughts.

For stupid made up reasons that I can’t hear but think I can, it’s all about minimizing conversation stages for me.

I love my Helix for how much it provides for a single conversion stage with ~2ms of latency. That’s hard to beat and it sounds great.

That said, my favorite to actually play though is my full analog board where I’m using a buffer and a pile of true bypass pedals. Again, for dumb made up reasons I feel most connected with that board.

I pretty much never use more than 1 digital pedal in series.

 

[dk_ace]

Generally, I don’t mind mixing them as long as they play well together and there are no noticeable issues (noise, latency, signal loss I can’t account for other ways, etc). That’s largely just because it’s more practical. I used to stress about whether or not that was really a good idea and wondered if I was missing something with a large board of mixed pedals, then I started noticing that some killer session guys had huge boards with no concern for that and they always sound great so I just ignore it now unless I notice a specific problem.

Money and hassle no object, I’d go for a gig rig switching setup and see if I notice a difference. Hard to justify that setup though for me when I’m super happy with my fm9 and the switching system alone costs as much as the fm9.

D

 

[la szum]

With latency being a cumulative affair I need, at a minimum, analog dry thru,
so that when a pedal is NOT engaged it is not adding unnecessary a/d/a conversions.

 

[laxu]

With latency being a cumulative affair I need, at a minimum, analog dry thru,
so that when a pedal is NOT engaged it is not adding unnecessary a/d/a conversions.

Will heavily depend on what pedals you are using though.

With my Strymons being about 1ms latency per pedal, turning on every single pedal on my board would result in a latency of something like 3-4ms. That's about the same as a single Universal Audio pedal, or the larger Tonex (though I think that got a latency improvement update recently?)

 

[Orvillain]

For me it's just about the workflow and the sounds more than caring whether something is analog or digital. But as it turns out, most of the sounds I want are digitally generated. My GigRig G3 helps take care of the signal to noise ratio, and I can bring pedals in and out of the signal path when I'm not using them.

But ultimately, guitar rigs are meant to be noisy. It's rock n roll boiz!!!

 

[James Freeman]

I've monitored the noise floor of the individual pedals on my board this weekend, the DD-3 raised the noise floor by about 6dB when bypassed because it uses opamp buffer, as is the GE-7.

In general, gain pedals should be first in the chain even before buffered pedals like Boss, any pedal before the drives like a tuner or wah should preferably be true bypass.

So for example, using only the SD-1 to boost a high gain but also having other buffered pedals on your board will raise the noise floor of the high gain amp a lot.

I also found that the switching PSUs that came with the Strymons are noisier than the isolated pedal power supply I use (Vitoos), when monitoring the noise floor.

Taking all that into account, the bypass type and the signal chain can be arranged for minimum noise floor, so the pedalboard will be usable even into high gain amps, for me it matters.

An alternative approach to noise is to never stop playing.
Or make it part of your "tone", ala Oasis.

 

[Orvillain]

These threads might be relevant James:

Noise floor measurements

I always use my effects in front of the amp. Even with high-gain. Coz I prefer the sound and the interaction between the effects and preamp. But the trade off is noise. So I'm always curious about keeping the noise floor as low as possible. I did some measurements earlier for a bunch of stuff...

thegearforum.com

Helix - I/O latency measurements

So.... We have a click source as audio. This is being routed out of my Presonus Quantum, into my Reamp box, and back into the 1st input on the Quantum. We can see that the input and output are exactly matched in terms of timing. Those with a keen eye will see the first sample of the looped...

thegearforum.com

 

[la szum]

Will heavily depend on what pedals you are using though.

With my Strymons being about 1ms latency per pedal, turning on every single pedal on my board would result in a latency of something like 3-4ms. That's about the same as a single Universal Audio pedal, or the larger Tonex (though I think that got a latency improvement update recently?)

It's only half irrational then.

Every added millisecond is like making me move an entire foot further
from my amp/cab.

 

[Whizzinby]

Until they make an analog plate and tunnel reverb pedal, unfortunately there will be a digital pedal on my board.