Incorporating External Effects Processors

While software effects processors can offer many distinct advantages over external processors, there is nothing like having high-quality hardware processors in the signal chain to improve the sound. External effects processors can easily be incorporated into Logic's software mixer by using a special "helper" plug-in that manages the flow from the audio interface's inputs and outputs to an external effects processor.

With this plug-in connected, you can treat the external processor almost as if it were a plug-in itself, inserting it into a channel or applying it as a bus effect in Logic's mixer. To illustrate this technique, you will insert an imaginary hardware reverb unit as a bus effect.

To make this integration possible in this exercise, you need to physically send a signal from your audio interface to the hardware processor and back. This is done by connecting an open pair of outputs from your audio interface into the stereo inputs of the hardware reverb, and connecting the stereo outputs of the hardware reverb back to an open pair of stereo inputs on the audio interface.

For the sake of this exercise, you will assume that inputs 56 and outputs 56 on your audio interface will be dedicated to the external processor.

NOTE

If your system configuration does not include as many as six inputs and outputs, you cannot complete this exercise.

Once this physical cabling has been done, you can freely assign any channel to the external effects processor by means of the I/O plug-in.

NOTE

As with reverb plug-ins inserted as bus effects, the wet/dry ration on the external hardware reverb should be set to 100% wet.

1.	Click the Global button to view the busses.
2.	Click-hold the top Insert slot for Bus 8 and choose Stereo > Logic > Helper > I/O. The I/O plug-in window opens. The next step is to assign the appropriate inputs and outputs of the audio interface to access the hardware processor. This is done by the Input and Output pop-up menus.
3.	Click the Output pop-up menu and choose 56.
4.	Click the Input pop-up menu and choose 56. You can now send signals to the hardware reverb inserted on Bus 8 by the same means you send to any bus effect: using the channel Send controls.
5.	Click the Global button to deactivate it. The Track Mixer switches to Track view, with the I/O plug-in window still open.
6.	Click-hold the topmost Send slot for the Guitar_riff1 channel, and choose Bus > Bus 8.
7.	Solo the Guitar_riff1 channel by clicking the Solo button.
8.	Use the Goto Previous Marker key command to locate to the Intro section. The cycle Region now encompasses the Intro section.
9.	Play the song.
10.	While the song is playing, drag up the Send knob on the Guitar_riff1 channel to adjust the amount of signal sent to the hardware reverb on Bus 8.
11.	If signal going to and from the hardware unit needs to be adjusted, drag the Output Volume and Input Volume sliders on the I/O plug-in.
12.	Stop the song.