Does anyone know if this should work okay? I have a DI bass track, if I create a send to hardware, run it through a drive pedal, then back in again?
It sounds okay, but loads better with an IR cab sim on it. Should I run it into Guitarix or something first though, as you’d have an guitar > pedal > amp in real life?
The drive pedal will probably behave differently with the line-level output from your audio interface than with the low-level signal directly from your bass.
So experiment with the output level to the hardware send. For certain pedals, e.g. fuzz, you might need a re-amp box to provide a proper signal to the pedal. A passive DI box used in reverse might work for that, IIRC.
I did buy a reamp box, so its coming out through that. Its a Radial box. So hopefully that’s okay. I use that for my guitar DI takes into an amp and it works well.
I just wasn’t sure if it was right to run a pedal signal into an IR cab sim.
That’s a complete artistical question. If the result is the sound you want, DO IT!
Some use the clean DI, some want distortion and some prefer IRs. All of that is totally fine.
Yeah I suppose its just the thought of plugging a pedal straight into a cab with no amp in real life is silly, but like you say, if it sounds okay then its all good.
It is a fuzz, and it sounds like a weird wet fart without the IR. But sounds pretty good to me with it.
Yes, but if the amp is run clean, and is just used to drive the speaker cab, i.e. you are not relying on the amp to generate more distortion, then direct to a cab IR is mostly equivalent. Think about what you want to simulate (if you know, sometimes you just know what a full signal chain sounds like, and kind of have to guess how much is coming from the pedal, how much from the amp, and how much from the speaker cab).
Fuzz is a little more straight forward, you probably care most about the sound of the fuzz pedal. A true (clean) overdrive pedal would usually be used to push an amp hard so you hear the amp breakup, and in that case you could probably do it all in guitarix, there would not be much point in sending out to a clean pedal just to increase the level since you can do that all in the DAW or amp simulator.
Not much to add but if you want to keep things in the box;
OmniAmp by Arboreal Audio is dead good and has some lovely bass amp stuff.
It’s subjectively not expensive but the source code is free if you want to try build it.
The Audio Assault stuff is also mega good like but not open source.
There are several big names who do exactly that. If it brings you a grammy than it isn’t THAT silly. 
There’s some great posts here everyone, thank you for all the useful links and info! Lots to think about. Doubt I’ve got any grammys coming my way haha.
You know what’s better than getting a grammy?
Getting praise and feedback after you share the piece you’re working on in the '‘ade with Ardour’ subforum
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