@MikeDB I totally agree with you. I recently completed an amplifier project and the audio chain ended up looking like this:
- Hot and Normal input jacks (jack switches select gain range)
- Single transistor inverting preamp w/ gain adjust
- Non inverting buffer with x2 gain and high pass filter
- Inverting optical compressor/limiter w/ drive adjust and low pass filter
- Symmetrical hard clipping (diodes) become active at ~50% drive level
- Daisy Seed DSP effects (non inverting?)
- Bypass
- Tremolo
- Echo
- Distortion
- Active tone stack (double inverting)
- Bass
- Mids
- Treble
- Volume
- Power amplifier (non inverting)
- Speakers
The original design was going to only have echo via a PT2399 until I got my hands on one and decided it was unacceptable in almost every respect of my design goals. I decided it was time to turn to the Makers realm and discover if there were any solutions there that I could use. I had the makings of a Teensy 4.0 solution in my shopping cart when I stumbled upon the Daisy Kickstarter that just closed the week before. I’m extremely pleased with the Daisy’s specifications, speed, and performance. I had already built the tone stack otherwise I would have had the Daisy provide that functionality (next build, definitely).
Back to your comment. I believe that EQ after effects is mandatory and not just to filter artifacts, but also to fit the room acoustics. There are no hard and fast rules around any of this stuff. I added distortion in the Daisy in an illogical order only because it sounded better to me that way.