Pardon me, as I'm putting this in my own Laymen's terms a bit..
Think of your FX chain as a linear timeline - this effect takes input in, and spits this output to the next thing in the chain. Think of FX you use as either MIDI FX that affect MIDI signals or Audio FX that affect audio signals. The ones you're referring to are meant to process MIDI data, and then output it as different MIDI data.
Now, MIDI data on it's own doesn't make a sound. It needs something to process it into a waveform to make sound - that's going to be your VSTi. So you need to alter this MIDI data before it hits the VSTi. If you do it after, your VSTi has already processed the MIDI into audio, and it's just passing along the altered MIDI information to anything else in the chain that may or may not be able to do something with it.
Most FX like reverbs and delays and such need to be after the VSTi because they are actually processing/altering an audio signal, not MIDI data.
So again, that brings me back to a few concepts:
- MIDI FX will alter MIDI data, Audio FX alter audio data (I'm simplifying here, probably, but that's the gist).
- Certain VSTis (ex. synths) will take a MIDI signal and generate a waveform (aka sound) from that MIDI data.
- MIDI on it's own does not make a sound, so you need something after your finished MIDI data to make the sound (VSTi).
I hope that explained it well enough.
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