I’ve seen several user presets that put the reverb and delay blocks after the amp and cab sim. While you can do whatever you want as long as it sounds good, I’m curious if there is a specific use for this.
Putting a reverb after the amp tends to wash out the sound and loses some of the tightness to my ears. Thoughts?
Most people do it this way. In a recording, you normally put delay and reverb on the recorded track, so it makes sense to put it AFTER the amp & cab. There are a few people who put it before the cab for a particular flavor, but that colors it and takes away the stereo spread (depending on how you set it up).
In short, if you DON’T do this, you’re in the minority.
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Completely agree with you for a recording application. I should have been more clear - I was referring to using it with an FRFR system where you are playing the amp model through a speaker. I understand doing this in the context of a recording or mix - you want to add reverb to the final signal as if you miced the full amp and cab.
However when using the QC solo through an FRFR system, shouldn’t the processing be done before the power amp and speaker? After all that is how you would set it up with a “real” rig.
Its probably subjective, but when I A/B the two setups putting the fx after the speaker it loses a bit of tightness in the sound and sounds a little less like a real amp in room.
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It’s mostly preferential. It just depends if you want the delay or reverb to be colored by the speaker. Another step further in coloration would be to put the delay and reverb in front of the amp. Putting reverb and delays at the end of the rig, to my ears, gives it a more polished, clear sound.
Yep its the speaker coloration that makes the difference here in perception.
I think if someone is going for the sound of an amped rig including FX going through the amp and speaker, then putting the fx prior to the amp or cab will sound the closest to that. In most cases it doesn’t matter much and the difference is subtle but I’ve seen some patches where I find that the fx through cab feels more real. I’m running an FRFR amp so it isn’t adding much color itself btw.
I get ya. Yeah, I suppose in a mono setup, it’s more or less tomato/tomahto. However, I almost exclusively play in stereo, so to set it up this way would mean that it would sound less than ideal most of the time. I mainly only hear my rig in mono during gigs when I only have a single FRFR as a monitor in front of me that has the whole band mix (we all use modelers and/or electronic drums).
That said, I think even if I were just playing into a single/mono FRFR as my normal practice rig, I think I’d still appreciate the fidelity and clarity of having the delay and verb after the cab block, since, again, it would affect the frequency response. I normally cut my cabs at about 80Hz and 6-8KHz, and that’s a whole lot of lost territory for things like a shimmer reverb, for instance. But, yeah, to each his own 
Makes sense yeah. If you are going for the fullrange sound then it makes most sense to treat the signal flow like you would in a DAW mixer. I also like full range sounds personally and even when I go through my amp direct, I choose the uncolored FRFR settings esp when using an acoustic instrument.
However when playing around with the QC using some classic amp models I couldnt put my finger on it I was missing some presence in the sound for want of a better word. Switching the FX around def made it sound more like I was sitting in front of the amp. Ill experiment some more - its possible that by dialling back the delay reverb one could achieve similar results.
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