Oh and FX Chain buttons do seem to be kind of silly considering the exact same thing can be achieved with knobs as far as I can tell.

Buttons are a convenient way to toggle a collection of values. There are FX that have buttons that you might want to map in an FX chain. They also save a little space in the GUI and space in the PC is pretty tight. Hopefully, the automation behavior is by design and not a bug. It is easy enough to make the automation toggle by jumping between nodes. Having the ability to continuously adjust button values via automation effectively doubles the number of automation knobs.

Beepster
@redbarchetta... You're like the new me around here. Hungry for knowledge. ;-)

Yeah and you know the funny thing, it all started becasue I just wanted to learn how to capture my guitar riffs and have them sound good.  That's the way it is with me, some small little idea snowballs into some HUGE knowledge lust.

Beepster


Oh and FX Chain buttons do seem to be kind of silly considering the exact same thing can be achieved with knobs as far as I can tell.

imagine there are 3 effects you are fine tuning only certain parameters on,having all these plug ins open is a mess for real estate.
assigned knobs that see ferquent use are a delight now in the FX-C

I may be misunderstanding Charlie but I meant the difference between the buttons and knobs inside the FX Chain modules. I definitely see the use of having a single knob control multiple effects. I just meant that the buttons seem like a redundancy. I'm sure I'm missing something though.

And I forgot to put in those notes that the FX Chain modules can be tossed in the ProChannel in X2 but I'm sure most folks know about that one. I may actually start doing things that way instead of using bins for my effects... maybe.

There are a cases where buttons are preferable to knobs. They provide a direct mapping to FX buttons and switches, for example some FX have on/off buttons, like the Cakewalk Tempo Delay power button or feature toggles, like the limiter button on the Sonitus Compressor.

@scook... And there it is. Yeah... brain is fried. I forgot about... actual button parameters. lol

It's because of the way the Mixing with X1 guy dealt with the knobs and faders in Channels Tools that was binding up my noodle. No excuse though. I just wasn't thinking.

Cheers.

All this has given me an idea on how to deal with my guitar parts now though. I'm gonna try tossing my amp sims into a Chain and then putting it as the first module of the ProChannel. I figure it would be more like getting a direct amp signal going into everything as opposed to using the bins. The pre/post status always confuses the heck out of me so I think that might be a way to make things easier.

But then again it might just sound like arse. Worth a shot though.

I now almost never use the bin.  I add al effects n the ProChannel.  It makes it easy to change the signal flow.
 
You can simply drag the effect around to experiment where it sounds better.  So, with amp sims, sometimes I compress before Amp, then EQ after, or compressor and EQ before, or EQ, then amp, then another EQ, then compressor, etc. etc..  You get the idea.  The ease of use is was keeps me in the PC all the time now.

Beepster!  Thanks for all of the info.

One thing that is not working for me is drag and dropping the fxchain from the media browser.

Were you doing this to pro channel or to the fx bin?  

I'm on X2a studio.