Quality of Life Question: Routing from my desk to Axe III through Focusrite 18i8

The Fractal’s high impedance input will outperform the focusrite’s in terms of noise and conversion. If that doesn’t bother you, you could free up some I/O and eliminate an additional conversion by routing the focusrite’s high impedance input to its SPDIF output, sending that to the axefx for processing, then routing the axefx’s processed signal back to the focusrite via SPDIF. SPDIF is a digital connection that carries two audio channels (i.e. stereo). This way you’re able to record the dry guitar from the focusrite for reamping, and the processed stereo audio from the axefx via spdif into the focusrite, with only a single conversion (guitar > focusrite), and without messing with aggregate devices or different input/output devices.

I used to do this with my setup but it was more trouble than it’s worth. I play live so I constantly had to change the axefx global settings for clock source and input source from digital to analog. For me it’s just easier to just plug directly into the Fractal and record with USB or its analog outputs into outboard pres or my interface’s line inputs like any other line level source.