DI and pedalboard null test recording, bypass worries?

andy_k

I just spent a few hours trying to set up a template in Reaper, for recording DI and FX guitars, and thought while I was at it, to try some experiments.
I'm running my guitar through a board with 6 pedals, going first into an MXR KFK 10 band eq which has 2 outputs.
Chain is, guitar < KFK, output A goes into input 1 of Scarlett 2i2, output B goes into Fuzzdog Klone (buffered) > Fuzzdog Angry Andy (true bypass) > Musikding Jan Ray clone ( true bypass) > Magnetic effects Dual Drive ( TS-Rat ) (true bypass) > Fuzzdog Blue Fool ( true bypass) > Fuzzdog Ghost echo (true bypass > Scarlett input 2.
I used a loop played through a Line 6 backtrack as a reference, into input 1, with a recording peaking at -6.2 DB.
Then I Hooked up the board as above, so the DI from KFK output A was into input 1, and the signal through pedals was into input 2.
I managed to get the signal from input 2 to record at -6.2DB to match input 1.
I then recorded the same loop via the backtrack, and lined up my reference to the 2 new tracks.
To my ears, through my Ilouds, these 3 recordings all sound identical, which is good right?
As a further comment, the KFK is unpowered, and is only acting as a splitter. I wasn't sure how this would work, as MXR are a bit weird as to how they describe their bypass, calling it 'true hardwired bypass', and a little research told me that this is sometimes called 'half assed bypass', and is possibly the worst of the bypasses.
This got me thinking, could I detect any tone loss through all those pedals, and also the 'half assed' bypass?
I think the answer is, NO, but I thought I would try a null test of the A and B outputs of the KFK.
If you can follow, there was a strange thing when I went from my reference to my first DI recording, in that my second recording came through at -6.3DB, using the same input, and I put that down to maybe losing .1 DB through the extra cable and the hardwire bypass in the KFK, I made input 2 match my reference at -6.2, so I thought that was close enough.
The test would be to see if the DI and the board would null, and they almost did.
I recorded the null, and made a copy which I normalised to be able to hear the differences, and was surprised to hear that it sounded pretty close to my original reference.
At this point, I was sick of hearing my loop, so I just did a few minutes playing to a click to see if it was any easier, which was one of the aims anyway.
I am going to do some closer scrutiny of the recordings tomorrow, with Fabfilter proQ to see if there is some stuff I am not hearing, but as it stands, I am pretty pleased how it worked out, considering most of the pedals are home made, and I can get a good sound on the way in without using headphones or software ( this was the aim, as latency has become a bit of a problem)
I went a bit further with the experiment, by using the recordings to send to a set of tracks which capture the sound through Overlouds plugin, and also go through Midiguitar2 to capture midi, and use that midi to record strings via Unify.
I'd like to be able to do all that in real time eventually, but think there will be too much latency at this point.
Still think it has been a productive day.
thanks for listening.