Who is using stereo external effects with DP32 and how?

[Cygnus]

How.... as in how do you have it connected?
I already know to return the signal back to the inputs and assign them to the stereo buss. All set with that. My question is a little more technical.
Do you connect send 1 and 2 from the DP32 to the stereo inputs of your device or just use send 1 and use it as a mono input to your device?
If a stereo track is sent to an external effects unit via "send1", is it sent as a stereo signal or summed to mono?

The reason why I ask, is because I used to own a NEO. It had 2 sends for an external device and a separate send level control for the internal effects. With the DP32 I have to sacrifice one of the send level controls for the internal effects. Which kind of sucks.....
With the NEO I was able to send the left side of a stereo track to send 1 and the right to send 2. True stereo. Can't do that with the DP32, or not really sure how.

Thanks!!

 

[Phil Tipping]

Mono or stereo depends on the external unit, e.g. some reverb units need (or sound better) with stereo inputs, other units might handle left & right completely differently.
Sounds like the neo is better for stereo sends. On the dp32, each external send is a a mono signal regardless of the source. Stereo tracks are summed to mono for each send and the pan/balance level has no effect, so you can't split left & right across the two external sends. You could use 2 mono tracks - one routed to send-1, the other routed to send-2.
Note that send-1 is routed to both the internal FX and the external socket simultaneously, so you don't have to sacrifice one for the other - could use both and adjust their respective return levels as reqd.

 

[Cygnus]

Thanks. Those are the answers I was looking for.
I'm using an external effects that will accept either a stereo or mono input (switchable) so I could go with either option.
I originally had both sends connected to the device thinking they were L and R, and the effect came back muddy and ill-defined. Using one send even with the stereo track summed to mono returns a nice stereo spread. Since it sounds good I'll just stick with it for simplicity's sake.
I really haven't delved into the internal effects until now. I didn't realize until now that it had its own return level.

Yes the NEO handled stereo tracks differently (much better in my opinion). It treated them as two connected mono tracks. Each with its own EQ, pan, etc. adjustments.

 

[Phil Tipping]

Glad it helped, cygnus. You could certainly copy or bounce a stereo track to 2 monos if you really need a stereo send, although the drawback is that all controls have to be kept in step if you're editing live to prevent the stereo image moving around. Maybe this is comparable to the NEO.
Might be wrong but from the experiments I've done, the track-edit routines seem to be instantaneous so they must use pointer manipulation as opposed to physically copying data, which makes it very easy to shunt data around between the tracks.
The internal effects may be worth exploring - some are stereo. They may not be as good as a high quality external unit but there's more to them than meets the eye - there's a summary here (http://www.tascamforums.com/threads/dp24-32-fx-definitive-summary-of-effects.4162).