Sorry if I disagree ;-) But submix mode is easy once understood, but everything needs a little time and
patience at the beginning.

General procedure to be understood:

1. enable submix mode
2. click to an HW output (bottom row)
3. Create the submix by raising the faders of channels that you want to hear on that HW output (aka "submix")
- from top row "HW inputs" (the inputs of your recording interface)
- from middle row "SW Playback" (audio playback channels of OS + applications (ASIO, WDM))
  also those need to be mapped to proper HW outputs (*)

(*) This is the very nice thing about TM FX, that you can finally decide to which HW output audio goes.

Actual doing:

So if you want to send audio to the external effect, click to the HW output where it is connected to your BBF Pro
and send the audio to that you want to have there by turning the faders of HW inputs / SW playback channels as you need.

If you want to record what comes out of this external effect, well then simply record the input channel in the DAW. HW inputs (whats connected to an input of your recording interface) will always be passed unaltered to the application / DAW by TM FX.

Do you the effect output also in your phones mix ?

Click to Phones HW Output and raise the fader of the HW input where the Effect is connected to.
By this you add this audio to your phones submix.

Do you the effect output also in your main monitors ?

Click to the Main Output where your monitors are connected to and raise the fader of the HW input where the Effect is connected to. By this you add this audio to your monitor submix.

Save your settings / routings

You can save the different routings for different putposes to snapshots:
- to a file on PC
- to one of the 8 Snapshot slots on the right side of the TM FX window
More on this in my step by step primer below.

Once this basic principle of routing is understood in submix mode, then you will see that this is the easiest, most logic, reliable and intuitive mixer which is available on the market.

Give it some time rome has not been build in one day. I came from different HW, latest Focusrite, there the mixer was not logic and I always had to struggle with it. In contrast to that TM FX is superb, actually the best one I ever saw.

Maybe my TM FX step by step primer helps you to get a good intro to the basics:

https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … rnal-equi/

PS: its good to follow this forum regulary, because from questions of other users and answers you can learn a lot and sometimes its also inspiring to try new things. There are many threads in this forum already, where questions like this about routing, submix mode, etc have been answered in detail.