Does setting the various gains on stacked effects make any difference? Or...

Can I set them all to X and just add a master in and and master out?

Am seeking to re-purpose my RPi box (which has 4 knobs) and am wondering can I squeeze 5 parameters out it by setting all the effect gains to say 0.5, or whatever.

As always your help is Very much appreciated. And I am hourly thankful for my pure data family.

Love, Peace, and Music thru us all,
Scott

@svanya Not really, if your effects are well designed.

In an analogue system it would be crucial to keep noise to a minimum, but in the digital domain much less. You could reduce dynamic range and levels too greatly at some point, and then not recover with good resolution.

For example.. if a module produces no output the next one will not recover what is missing.... and if every module has a gain of 0.5 then not much will drop out of the bottom of the stack.

So maybe keep any dynamic range or level reducing effects for the last, and avoid any control within the individual effects that squashes (or expands) the range too greatly.

So....... I don't know....... but you do!

The numerical considerations of digital arithmetic are something to think about as whale-av mentions

Also, every effect is different. Obviously some function in a way that will alter the volume, or behave non-linearly with inputs of different volume.

An example might be a filter combined with an expander or compressor. At different frequencies the signal will have bigger or smaller amplitude, and will therefore interact with the compressor differently.

Another example would be a wave shaper

There are things called "linear operations" Most filters are linear. This basically means that if you switch the order of them the outcome will be the same, or if you change the volume of the input signal the volume of the output will be proportional to the change

First:

I apologize, My Friends: in this crazy No-Man's land between large projects I failed to include more/enough detail.

And I think it is funny and so terribly sweet, that my pd family responded to my query before I even had time to conjure my own reply to the thought! LOL!

Thanks, My Friends. Think you are probably aware how far this goes to bolster a user's spirits.

The Additional Detail:

leveing the gains, i.e. setting them to a default, is in an effort to squeeze the effects I want onto the 4-knob Raspberry Pi box I have already built.

So if I can level the gain, then I can have any effect which uses gain plus an additional 4 parameters.

The current configuration I have so far is in the pic above.

It's purpose: to be a simple, clean, plug-and-play patch that includes roughly ~90% of the common/simple effects then sent in a static linear order. In the picture, the signal runs left-to-right then top-down, i.e. noisegate>pitchshiter, etc.

So...

1-Given a default gain is this layout "right"? Would appreciate any amendments you might suggest regarding their sequence.

and

2-Am I missing any crucial "basic"/4+gain or under effects?

Thank you, so much.

In this crazy world, it feels so good knowing I have some people I can count on.

Love, Peace, and Music thru us all,
Scott

Sorry, for the duplicate of a question I posted elsewhere, but their both pertinent to the same vision.

Ciao for now,
S

yeah, unless you're feeding stuff through a waveshaper, then you can do away with individual gains. It just may become confusing, for example, when using a compressor, and getting a much lower signal, that you have to adjust the master gain on all fx.

in your fx there, distortion is a kind of waveshaper, so the gain of modules previous to it will affect the output. The other ones all look pretty much linear though.

other thing to note though, i guess... is that most of the 'gain' settings in the DIY patches actually run the sound through tanh~ saturation, which is in itself non-linear.

So, at any stage there, if you pump gain beyond halfway, then you're basically distorting the signal and adding fuzzyness....so if you remove all those gains...then you'll end up with a much cleaner output signal, but with less of the intended grit that those gain stages were put there for.

Thanks for the info (and I think affirmation (sort of :--) at least sound good enough to try) @seb-harmonik.ar and @mod. Really appreciate it,

Once I get the patch laid out I will be able to test sound. Generally don't do that until everything "looks" right first.

Will try and rem to come back here and let you know how it went.

Ciao for now, and thanks, for the help.

-Keeping my fingers crossed,
Scott

note:
given the above 4+gain my original 60 effects drops to about 49 because I "lose" diy2-4tap;
diy2-EQ7;
diy2-EQ13;
diy2-spectdel;
stalb-4tap;
stalb-flanger;
stalb-thresh;
stalb-vcf-phaser;
mo-18string;
mo-beatlooper;
mo-sympstrings;