I figured out how to record the FX in my Behringer XR18

I've been using the XR18 wireless mixer in my little project studio for... a couple years I guess? Time flies! Anyway I have successfully used this as an 18 input audio interface for SONAR and Ableton Live. I never used more than 5 or 6 inputs at a time, and that was when I had my modular synth stuff set up.

I also have messed around with it to do "live" mixing, in which scenario I can use the 4 built in effects processors of the XR18. You can assign 1 FX to be an insert, or use them as aux send FX like a regular reverb.

The documentation is really thin and so it took me awhile to realize that you can only assign 1 FX block as an insert on a channel.

It also took me about two hours to figure out how to be able to use the XR18's internal channel FX (gate, compressor, EQ) other FX blocks while recording. I just got a Peavey Classic 20 which sounds pretty good but I'm not thrilled with the reverb. The XR18 has a variety of smoother sounding reverbs which I was using for ambience while tracking, but I couldn't initially figure out how to record it.

The secret is all in the USB Sends. Normally the analog inputs are directly connected to the USB sends, so this is what you record in the DAW. However you can choose any place in the input chain, including pre-fader level which picks up whatever you added as a channel insert.

Also, supposing you are not really using analog channels 9-16 (I'm not) then you can route FX returns (individual L/R) to pairs of USB sends.

Maybe doing this is a little screwy since you probably have a ton of EQ and dynamics and delay and reverb plugins available already in your DAW. Reasons you might want to do it in the XR18 anyway:

- You can monitor all of these directly at the mixer level, giving less latency than if you monitored through the DAW.

- Maybe there's a delay setting that you like and you just want to record it as it is now rather than see if you can recreate it with a different plugin.

- I liked the channel settings including a gate, EQ, compressor and dialed those in for the cab sim XLR feed from the Peavey head. Conceivably you might want to control that in the mixer and if you played like that live, you could use those settings for both live and recording.