I wonder if someone could provide some real world examples of the benefits of the routing matrix. I find it the main barrier to using the 16rig. Poorly explained in the manual and Arturia youtube videos. The most progress I’ve made with it was after reading @tmoore who provided an excellent explanation to another forum poster. But this just allowed me to use the 16rig as I would any other audio interface, rather than pushing it beyond, as I was led to believe by promotional material.
Thanks, I’m glad you found my post helpful!
For me, the routing matrix is one of the most interesting things about the 16Rig, and one of the main things that made me decide to buy it. That said, I haven’t actually been using the routing matrix as much as I had hoped, mostly because I haven’t been buying hardware effects as I had expected to do this year. This is more due to my personal circumstances than any fault of the hardware, though, and I’m still hoping to make more use of it over the long term. It’s definitely one of the more complex aspects of the 16Rig, and maybe that means it’s not for everyone, but it gives you a level of flexibility that isn’t very common in other interfaces, especially when combined with the high I/O count and ADAT expandability.
I think the best way to think of it is like a patchbay, such as the popular Samson and Behringer rack units:
Except instead of making connections using patch cables, you do it using the routing matrix in AFCC. There are other digitally-controlled patchbays on the market, but they’re pretty high end and quite expensive. Other than saving a rack space and the mess of a bunch of patch cables, the ability to save presets and switch between them quickly can be a huge time saver. Even manually reconfiguring connections can be done a lot faster by clicking the matrix than re-patching 1/4" cables.
So, the routing matrix is useful for a lot of the same things that an analog patchbay is. If you’ve never used one (I never have myself) and don’t know what they’re for, there are plenty of articles on the web about it.
One of the most immediately useful examples is setting up a complex audio effect routing path, like a guitar pedal board that you can rearrange without having to re-cable everything.
Let’s imagine you have a guitar plugged into input 1 on the front of the 16Rig, an amp connected to output 3 on the front, and some mono guitar pedals that can handle line-level signals connected to outputs 5 & 6 with their returns connected to inputs 5 & 6 (let’s say a distortion and a delay). Here are some things you might try:
- Route input 1 to output 5, input 5 to output 6, input 6 to output 3 to get a standard guitar → distortion → delay → amp chain.
- Take that but split input 1 between output 5 and USB 1, so that you can play through the full chain while you track, but record the clean guitar signal into your DAW so that you can apply FX more precisely after recording.
- Or split input 6 between output 3 and USB 6 so that you can both monitor and record the whole chain.
- Or record both the clean and effected signals and mix them!
- Maybe you want to try hearing what it sounds like with the distortion applied after the delay instead of before. Just click to rearrange the routing so that input 1 goes to output 6, input 6 goes to output 5, and input 5 goes to output 3.
- Or you want to use the delay as a parallel send from the clean guitar signal and not have that go through distortion at all, while still having the dry signal distorted. You can split input 1 between the delay and distortion outputs, then route the delay and distortion inputs to separate USB destinations to record them separately.
Of course, this isn’t only useful for guitars. Synths, drum machines, any audio that you want to route through outboard effects.
You might be thinking: I can do routings like this in my DAW already, but when you do that, you’re dealing with latency on each trip in or out of the 16Rig, which will add up to a lot for a long FX chain and make it hard to play. Routings made in the matrix have effectively zero latency.
You can also achieve some of this using the 16Rig mixer and aux buses, but you only get four of those, and they don’t help you with serial routing scenarios like the first example. If you combine the mixer and the matrix, you can try even more interesting things like feedback loops that pass through an FX chain.
These are just some examples, but hopefully I’m getting the idea across.
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Hey @zynapse and welcome to The Sound Explorers Forum!
GREAT post there from @tmoore
I don’t use a 16Rig myself, but do use an RME FireFace UFX III which uses something called ‘TotalMix’, which can also be used in a matrix system and it’s AWESOME, ONCE you become familiar with it.
I wish more manufacturers would include this as it is just so massively flexible and not actually as complex as it seems, ONCE you’re familiar with it.
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Thanks @tmoore for this incredibly detailed explanation. I’m looking forward to trying the matrix with my new understanding of it. Your explanation is clear and finally I think I get it.
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