FX - Architecture & Signal Flow

 

 

The FX in Omnisphere are organized into Racks, with each Rack containing up to four FX Units.

 

PATCH FX:

A Patch in Omnisphere can contain up to three Racks of four FX Units each, for a total of twelve FX Units in a single Patch.

To access the FX Racks for a Patch, select a Part in the header and then select the FX button.

Each Layer of a Patch (A & B) has its own FX Rack. The FX in these Racks affect the specific Layer they’re inserted into, and can have any of their parameters modulated with any Modulation Source. These are Pre-fader Insert FX.

Each Patch also has a Common FX Rack, which affects both layers. These are Post-fader Insert FX.

 

MULTI FX:

A MULTI in Omnisphere can contain up to four Aux Send Racks plus a Master Rack, for a total of twenty FX Units.

To access the FX Racks for the four Aux Sends and the MASTER Rack, select the MULTI tab in the header and then select the FX button. 

Each of the four Aux Sends has its own FX Rack. The four Aux FX Racks can be used by any of the eight Parts in a MULTI using the Aux Sends on the Mixer page.

The final FX Rack in the signal chain is the Master Rack. All audio routed through OUT A runs through the Master FX Rack.

In summary, a MULTI can have up to 20 FX Units loaded, plus 8 Parts containing up to 12 FX Units each. This means a fully loaded MULTI can have as many as 116 active FX Units (in 29 Racks) loaded at once!  Of course, to actually run that many simultaneous FX would require a very powerful computer.

Below is the effects signal flow to give you an idea how Omnisphere’s effects are chained.

Signal Flow

Each FX Rack has four FX Slots.  The signal flow of every FX Rack type is in series - feeding the audio from the top slot through the middle slot and then through the bottom slot. An example of this is illustrated in the picture below:

 

• In this example, the audio first goes through Flame Distortion FX Unit in the top slot. 

• The distorted audio is sent into the EZ-Phaser unit in the middle slot.

• The distorted and phased audio is sent to the EZ-Verb unit in the slot below it.