React to Angular Signal without using signal state

I'm getting back into Angular for the first time since v8, and have been really liking using signals as a cleaner alternative to RxJS.

The one thing that appears to be missing is the Signal equivalent of a value change being able to trigger a callback without actually using any of the state provided by those signals.

For example the RxJS equivilant would be something like

const a$ = new BehaviorSubject<string>("val1"); const b$ = new BehaviorSubject<string>("val2"); merge([a$,b$]).subscribe(() => { this.event.emit() })

I know in React you can do something like the following

const [stateA, setStateA] = useState('val1'); const [stateB, setStateB] = useState('val2'); useEffect(() => { emitEvent(); }, stateA, stateB)

It seems like this isnt possible with Angular Signals? The effect() function doesn't allow you to manually define the dependencies, and the only way I would think to do it would be to arbitrarily retrieve the values inside the effect() and then not do anything? That seems messy.

Any pointers would be great!