The name of the two System (wide) Effects, Reverb and Chorus, are carry overs from the early days of effect processing in synthesizers. They are accessible from each Part via a Send/Return scenario exactly like the Auxiliary Send/Return setup on any professional mixing console. REVERB short for Reverberation Chamber (every recording studio would have one); the word CHORUS was used to specify all time delay type effects. After all the difference between Phasing, Flanging, Chorusing, and Echoing is matter of degree of the delay.

_ Phase Shifting is the smallest change in delaying the signal. Picture a sine wave that starts a 0 degrees, is at maximum at 90 degrees, returns to 0 at 180 degrees is at minimum at 270 degrees, before returning to 0. Now offset the movement ever so slightly and you have phase shift.

_ Flanging is a small change of about .1ms through to about 4ms between two identical signals. The word comes from tape recorder flanges. A flange was a metal plate on which magnetic tape was guided through the recorder. The tape was so tightly wound When you removed it new from the box, you placed it on a flat metal flange, and placed another metal flange on top. Now between two flanges it was guided through the works of the recorder. Two 1/4" tape decks were fed the same signal, say an electric guitar and it was recorded for the length of the song. And you would start playback of both machines simultaneously. When exactly in sync your ear/brain hears a +3dB increase in volume. To get the Flange Effect, the engineer would briefly hold their thumb against the tape flange to momentarily slow the movement of one of the two tape recorders thus creating the "delay" - it was all done by ear/touch and it required two Ampex, two Revox or two Scully 1/4" machines ...it was quite an expensive "effect" (that's why when the Eventide company made the first rack mount Flanger and it sold for over $1100 and every studio had to have one!)

_ Chorusing is a rich delay of about 4ms - 20ms

_ Echo at about 20 or 30ms of delay you will hear a complete repeat of the event and we call that an echo

How the whole category of Time Delays wound up being referred to as "Chorus" I'll blame on General Midi - which required two basic System Effect processors as minimum, Reverb and Chorus. At least that was where I first encounter the two names paired like they were partners.

Signal flow is the most important thing to get a handle on when you are seeking a better understanding of audio and Effects in particular. This is particularly true when it comes to affective effect processing. The XF uses professional mixing console routing as the basis for how signal flows through the synthesizer. A Voice or Part is like a single musician playing an instrument. So imagine a guitar player with a wah-wah pedal, and a combo amp. These are like his Insertion Effects... He inserts the guitar into the wah-wah pedal and then to his combo amp. Insertion Effects are controllable in real time, by the player – and this is an essential part of performing. That is the guitar Voice in Voice mode.

Now take that player and his rig to a recording studio. This would be the MIXING mode. When you activate the INSERTION SWITCH for the PART containing the Guitar Voice, it is like the player brought along his wah-wah pedal and combo amplifier from home. And they will be able to manipulate them in real time as they perform. It is important to understand that INSERT EFFECTS are apart of the VOICE... while the SYSTEM EFFECTS belong to the "studio".

In the studio (MULTI/MIXING) mode all instruments are plugged into the console, the every channel has two auxiliary sends. One connects to the studio's reverberation chamber (REV), the other send can be routed to some sort of delay/chorus/flanger (as may be required by the session).

That is what you have here in the XF. Real time control over personal effects (Insert Effect), and a send/return situation with the System Effects.

Now to continue with this analogy, if you route a signal to a direct out on a mixing console, you interrupt the signal in the patchbay... this takes that channel out of the main (system) mix and allows you to route it, in isolation, to some other destination. This interruption removes that channel BEFORE the auxiliary sends (the ones feeding the Reverb and the Chorus processors), but you would be doing this interruption precisely because you are going to process the signal in isolation, separately.

When you take a PART of your MIXING program and route it to any of the assignable outputs, it is removed from the main stereo mix, and it no longer is pooled with the other signals via the aux sends to the studio's effects.

Routing a channel to a direct output is done when you have something you want to do to it in isolation.

The effect routing in the XF Voice is one of the reasons you can make it sound so good. A Voice can be one or more instruments combined – remember a Voice is made up of as many as 8 Elements. Each Element can be an instrument or a part of an instrument. The VOICE: PRE 1:018(B02) Piano & Strings is an 8 Element Voice where Elements 1-4 make up the piano and Elements 5-8 make up the strings. Because of the intricate routing within the Voice architecture, the four Elements of the piano go to INSERTION A (setup as the VCM EQ 501) while the four Elements of the strings go to INSERTION B (setup as a separate VCM EQ 501) – this is an example of how when setup in parallel each instrument in this combined Voice has its own powerful equalizer. Volume can be controlled separately: The Assign 1 knob controls the volume of the string Elements, while Assign 2 controls the volume of the piano Elements. The Mod Wheel is assigned to increase the Element level of the strings – so it can be used to intensify the strings. The [AF1] button will cause an increase in the reverb Send of all Elements together to the Reverb chamber, while [AF2] will cause a longer release time on the amplitude envelope of all Elements.

Hope that helps.