Recently I've been using studio monitors to make patches for Direct Recording. Briefly,  I noticed that I like the sound of my patches much better with the amp volume virtual knob set at full. This creates a conflict for some of the amps that are really loud when you blast that volume knob, so I started compensating by lowering the mixer from 0DB which according to the manual is unity gain. The question is: for those amps that have very loud volume, is there compression happening when I lower the Mixer level from 0db (unity gain) so I don't blow my speakers and eardrums?  I  would appreciate anyone chiming in with what they know.

My ears are telling me that there is  some compression happening, but it's really a desirable effect where the sound completly fills and becomes less harsh without being muddied. Now I almost went back to all my patches and blasted the virtual volume knob and everytime I did that, the sound and the feel of the amp came to life and it goes without saying that I'm comparing at identical volume levels. All the sudden the sound is fuller, less harsh and feels closer to a real amp than before. Quite honestly, I'm thrilled at this discovery because not only the feel is improved, but it's something that the listener can also hear. Using my studio monitors, the difference is shocking even though at first it might seem not as dramatic but somehow the patches that I used to enjoy and love sound three dimentional. By that I mean the sound all the sudden seems to jump out of the speaker as if it has been inflated to occupy more air. for the clean sounds I've always done the opposite which is to boost the mixer up to 4db above unity gain and that seemed to also have a similar effect. I know in the older PODs channel volume at full was supposed to give the best signal to noise ratio, but I didn't find any thing in the manual to address that. At any rate my conclusion is that setting the mixer at 0db unity gain (which is the default) is ok in general but messing around with mixer seems to drastically improve the sound if you spend time and see what it will do to your patches. for me the High gain patches, I prefer boosting the amp volume while for the crystal cleans I like to boost the Mixer. I''m sure this can be the opposite for some, but I'd like to have an answer to two main quesions:

1-Is the mixer set at below 0db compressing the sound of a an amp wih fully boosted volume knob?

2-Does the virtual amp volume at full give a better signal to noise ratio like the old pods? (I think the actual physical unit volume at full gives better signal to noise ratio)