Hardware FX Send Return on Keys, X

Hey gang.

I have been looking for a brains system for creating ambient meditative tracks live and in the studio.

I was originally looking at Deluge but now looking at Keys (So I can have decent pianos, etc all in one).

Hardware FX are crucial for my music. What I am wanting to do is have a hardware FX send and return which I can control per instrument. I know Keys doesn't have a dedicated but can I use a second output and control the output value per instrument to route to my FX? And receive that back? (Nice to have is send back so i can record the FX, but not must have)

I see X has 8 outputs so its probably easier to send outputs from that to a mixer, and use that for the FX loop, right?

I also play guitar and sing, it would be handy to have vocals and guitar inputs and amp sims, and send the guitar and mix to hardware FX also.

If thats the case, with all the outputs and inputs, it seems to me that the X will be able to do that. Correct? . But can the keys serve my purpose? Thoughts?

Thanks!

what you're limited with is number of INPUTS on the MPC. Doesn't matter how many independent routes you can send your signal for external processing if your return path is only a stereo mix of all them :/

I was rather refering to the OP. By the look of things, he wants to route separate tracks out, process them and bring them back separately. Or maybe I just misunderstood the post
Anyway, I do it same way as you do - with just two inputs there's not much choice

Lampdog wrote:Me, from mpc (2ch out) to korg (2ch in/out) back to mpc (2ch in).
That’s it, that’s all. It matters to me.

Thanks.

The USB interface sounds like i could connect Keys to an interface by USB, adding 8 channels of outputs, which I could mix digitally in the USB interface and use I/O in that to connect to FX.

That could work.

I can't find much info on that. Alot of google posts talk about USB interfaces not working as expected so not sure if I can count on it or not

Here's a thread of users reporting on those that are compatible and are not. I have the Behringer UMC 1820 and don't have any problems with it, and others have reported the same, although I am still on MPC V2 firmware and haven't tried with V3.

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=211654

I didn't plan on routing my lexicon through the SPDIF but gave up trying when I used up all the tracks with synths. Latency is something that is fixed, so whether small enough for FX returns I don't know, but I imagine it's similar to the latency when using the internal interface.

Thanks!