Stereo Wet Effects into two Separate Amps

In trying to set up my Quad Cortex for church to mimic the method used by prominent praise + worship guitarists. I would like to have a wide stereo ping pong delay and modulated stereo reverb go out to two separate amps so the sound person can hard pan the left and right amps. However, I’ve run into some issues. Here are the two compromises I’ve made:

  1. In the first photo (SWTL3) I’ve put a splitter after the wet effects on Row 3. I thought for sure this would do the trick. It does give my sound person the ability to pan each amp separately. But the stereo wet effects get summed. I don’t understand why the ping pong doesn’t hit the two amps differently. I feel like I really messed with the QC splitter and mixer settings too. It just ends up sounding a little flat.

  2. In the second photo (SWTL4) I put amp1 in Row 3 and amp 2 in Row 4, then sum them together into the stereo wet effects on Row 3. Putting the Effects at the end makes a much more wide-sounding patch (the ping pong delay sounds awesome here), but it sums the amps together, which makes the amps sound less dynamic to my ears.

I thought of putting a stereo delay/reverb up on Row 1, but I need that Row for the very light delay and light hall reverb. I feel like I’m misunderstanding how the splitter/mixer works? Any suggestions? Tone I’m aiming for at 2:20

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I’ve been trying to figure out something similar and I’ve run into same problems (at least in previous firmwares). Could you share your presets so that i/we other forum users could try this out and try to find a solution? :blush:

My guess is that in the first one (#3) the ping ping effect doesn’t “know” to send the L of the delay (‘ping’) to the upper amp (output 3) and the R (‘pong’) to the amp below (output 4). If I’m right, when the ping-pong is engaged and put before the amps it will send both of the LR signals to both of the amps other than L to the upper and R to the other amp, which causes the summing effect.

And like you said, your preset #4 basically just uses both of the amps in parallel (which definitely could sound really good and interesting depending on the setup) and sums them up, then sending it to the ping pong.

Had to test out, here some findings:

  • with ping pong delay or tape delay w/ pingpong engaged AND telling QC to use only one mono output, it will still play the ping pong in stereo (at least in headphones the pingpong effect can be heard)
  • using splitter in A/B -mode AND ‘split’ mode BEFORE a dual cabinet in parallel, the ping pong effect can be heard properly (i.e. in stereo). Configured this way, using the cabinets’ panning and phase shifting the wet-dry(-wet) effect can be heard right. Output normally in stereo at the end of the chain.

Couldn’t attach a picture of the setup, will do tomorrow. I hope this helped! At least I found some pretty amazing sounds after figuring this out!

I just made these public on the Cortex app. I do not see a way to get a share link on there but if you search for SWTL_3 or SWTL_4 it hopefully will show up. I was running it USB out into my laptop to play along with tracks, so you’ll obviously need to change the outputs according to your own needs.

The name, by the way is a kind of joke. It stands for “safely worship the lord” because I knew I was making a patch that is less innovative/creative than it is a “safe” attempt at duplicating another artist’s sound. Mostly making fun of myself.

I think I need to see what you mean with the splitter in A/B mode. I feel like I tried that, but in “SWTL_3” when I ran Row 3 & Row 4 to separate channels in Logic Pro, and hard panned them left and right, the ping-pong was flat. Whereas when I do the exact same setup in “SWTL_4” with the ping pong delay at the end of the chain I definitely hear the ping pong operating in stereo and it sounds pretty huge.

I feel like the problem is in the splitter like you said. I would LOVE to keep the ping pong in stereo, but still be able to keep both amps in separate channels in Logic Pro. That’s why I’m curious what you’ve been cooking up!

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This is the exact reason why i harp on all the time about the need for a stereo enhancer block which would:

  1. allow a stereo signal on a single path without the need to split to two rows (huge resource and grid space benefit)
  2. Eliminate the need to use two cabinet blocks
  3. Providing stereo pass through can be enabled on cab blocks, ensure wet stereo effects aren’t inadvertently summed to mono. Stereo fx currently get summed to mono when it passes through a single cabinet block, which is useless for those of us needing the cabinet at the end of the chain so that the post effect/ pre-cab signal can be split off for use with a physical power amp & cab.
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Neural any update on this? I just want true ping pong delay on a stereo amp setup!