Stacking DSP

[Bachus]

Anyone here that has been experimenting with stacking more insert effects on a single sound?

Espescially where it comes to EP's and guitars, i love to stck dsp on them.. 
its not much different from what guitarists and EP players in the 70's did..

They route the guitar sound trough several effects units
Same goes for ep's ..  it adds much more depth and dirt to them

Looking for people to share their experiences with me..

[BenoitM]

I did some experiments with the DSPs of the Genos (mainly in search for a more convincing distorted guitar sound), in theory the possibilities are awesome !

But in practice, there are some 'shortcomings' (read: 'bug defects') :
- The Genos allow to set multiples different DSPs to a single voice (say 'Right 1') , but the main 'Voice Edit' screen only shows the last added one... the workaround is to use the 'Mixer' screen that show all the DSPs as Insertion Effects.
- The Genos allows us to 'tweak' each DSP, by modifying the 'Detail Parameters' , a very important point to achieve a good distorted guitar sound with reverb, distortion, compression... but once again, accessing the 'Parameters' screen is not really 'user friendly' (read: 'a f***ing nightmare'), since you have to either:

• Temporarily disable other assigned DSPs, edit the parameters, reactivate the other DSPs
• Temporarily assign to another part the other DSPs, edit the parameters, reassign the other DSPs to the initial target part

Not really practical, and really frustrating when you need to test a voice with all the dsps activated ... 

But the worst is yet to come:
- When you achieved the exact sound you were looking for, you save it, right ? You have to save it in a Registration Memory (not as a 'User/Custom Voice', since it can only remember *one* dsp) ...
- You switch off your Genos, happy with the result
- Later, you switch on your Genos, select your registration, and play it ... W T F  It doesn't sound like when I saved it ! Something is missing... -> Yes: The registration kept the DSPs 'Type' (Distortion, Reverb, Compression and so on...) , but only saved the tweaked parameters of one of them (It seems to be the the last edited one...)

End result: I stopped trying to assign multiple DSPs to the same part, since I cannot reliably save my settings. (and, yes, i tried to check/uncheck the various checkboxes when saving the Registration, yes I double-checked the 'Parameter Lock' screen, and yes, I did a Factory Reset of my Genos, without any change...)

This is one of the biggest flaw in the current (v1.30) firmware, I really hope that it will be fixed in the 'rumored' upcoming February 'big' update !


btw: Another area plagued with bugs is the 'Style Assembly' functionnality, most of the time it will display a 'Out of memory' message when I try to copy multiple parts of a Style to assemble it with another one, but if I wait a little bit (or I copy one track at a time) the error message appears much less frequently... (As a Software Developper, I suspect that the Style Assembly functions was created by a Junior Developper, not aware of how to correctly manage memory allocation/deallocation ...).

Currently, the Genos is a 'Shut up and take my money, I'll only switch on and play' instrument, not a 'Hey what an amazing piece of hardware ! There's much more power inside, let's see what unique sound we can achieve with this beast' ... A lot of people seems to be happy using only the presets styles and voices (which are great, without any doubt) , but when we see all the wasted possibilites, we can be really frustrated...

Benoit

Ps: Ho, and 'Yamaha Expansion Manager' software sucks a well.

[KeyboardByBiggs]

In regards to multiple effects...PREACH ON BROTHER! 

[jwyvern]

As Benoit says, you can stack DSP's but on saving only one of them will have modified parameters, the other(s) in the stack will have reverted to preset values.
Since it is possible to save up to 10 DSP's with parameter values of choice in user memory slots,  in theory it should be possible to use them as part of the  stack and they should save in a registration with "their preset" (ie. your special) settings so you should end up with more than 1 DSP having edited values as a workaround.

John

[valimaties]

...
Since it is possible to save up to 10 DSP's with parameter values of choice in user memory slots...

John

Hi John.
Wow, 10?! Do you have a new version of firmware which save 10 DSP's in user memory?

Regards,
Vali

[Bachus]

A Bit dissapointed all these restrictions..
But i decided not to be dissapointed by these restrictions

Somehow it seems like Yamaha even with a new instrument like the Genos keeps fallng back into restrictions caused by old formfactors...  all for the sake of backward compatibillity

[DerekA]

Wow, 10?! Do you have a new version of firmware which save 10 DSP's in user memory?

I think John is talking about "user effects". A user effect is an effect type + custom parameter settings, which can then be saved as a standalone effect and applied to whatever voice you want. So the registration would be storing pointers to those user effects, and in theory you should get all the correct parameter settings too when you call it up. The drawback is that you can only save 10 custom user effects.

Saving effect parameters with registrations (without creating standalone user effects) came in with the Sx70 series. It looks like the feature is actually 'save one set of effect parameters' not 'save all sets of effect parameters'. I wouldn't hold out much hope for a firmware fix unless this works "properly" on an Sx70.

[jwyvern]

Hi John.
Wow, 10?! Do you have a new version of firmware which save 10 DSP's in user memory?

Regards,
Vali

No Vali, it's nothing really new and even goes back to Tyros in an attempt to give users a limited opportunity to actually save some DSP parameters before Genos.
On Genos, after saving Details in the DSP, exit, then look at bottom left of the DSP screen and touch the icon with the arrow. A window pops up allowing you to save the details to one of the memory positions.


John

[Bachus]

So how about song and style files...

Do these save all the dsp eddits made to their used DSP's?

[DerekA]

I'm pretty certain it will save all the effect parameters in a MIDI file *if* you have assigned only one DSP per track.

The T5 data manual, parameter chart, shows that the effect parameters can be saved for a song - but apparently not for a style. Genos adds ability to save parameters from DSP 1-20 into a registration, but again apparently not for a style which uses DSP21-28.

Not sure what happens if you assign more than one DSP to a single track in a MIDI file (or even if you can) ... time for some experiments 

[valimaties]

No Vali, it's nothing really new and even goes back to Tyros in an attempt to give users a limited opportunity to actually save some DSP parameters before Genos.
On Genos, after saving Details in the DSP, exit, then look at bottom left of the DSP screen and touch the icon with the arrow. A window pops up allowing you to save the details to one of the memory positions.


John

Yes John, thanks, I knew it's not new, but I remembered it was only 3 User slots area for User DSP. So, it's my mistake, even if I remembered I have saved only 3 User DSPs because I have no slots available, BUT now I see there are only 3 User DSPs for Variation DSP, not for Insertion DSP slots.
I think I post too quickly 

Best regards,
Vali

[jwyvern]

On Genos you can assign Dsp's to where you want by selecting the appropriate parts from the Assign list whether panel, style or song channels, stacking more than one on a part where desired. I haven't spent time with guitars needing chains of edited effects but in principle I believe it should be possible to save more than 1 Dsp plus edits per part where necessary by first saving the edits to a user DSP and then assigning that user to the chain (that is the bit I have not done so far to confirm it).
Sometimes you need a strong constitution to work through some of these lesser used areas, not only because they are obscure or not properly documented, but they are more liable to having bugs which knock you off track.
For example I have a tremolo setting saved in a user slot that I use as a system effect in styles which shows up in the style as the Preset "Tremolo 1" instead of the name I saved with it. In this particular case all happens to be well because in spite of the name being wrong the parameters I set are retained even though the indications may lead you to suppose "it doesn't work".
But be ready to check that what you think is happening, really is .
John

[Bachus]

On Genos you can assign Dsp's to where you want by selecting the appropriate parts from the Assign list whether panel, style or song channels, stacking more than one on a part where desired. I haven't spent time with guitars needing chains of edited effects but in principle I believe it should be possible to save more than 1 Dsp plus edits per part where necessary by first saving the edits to a user DSP and then assigning that user to the chain (that is the bit I have not done so far to confirm it).
Sometimes you need a strong constitution to work through some of these lesser used areas, not only because they are obscure or not properly documented, but they are more liable to having bugs which knock you off track.
For example I have a tremolo setting saved in a user slot that I use as a system effect in styles which shows up in the style as the Preset "Tremolo 1" instead of the name I saved with it. In this particular case all happens to be well because in spite of the name being wrong the parameters I set are retained even though the indications may lead you to suppose "it doesn't work".
But be ready to check that what you think is happening, really is .
John

There is only 3 slots for user variation, and 10 slots for user insert effects..
In my book, i want to save 28 insert effects with all their specific parameters in performance memmory...  or atleast in a style or song track..