You should use DI when going from 1/4 into the snake. It will still work however depending on the length of the snake you might get some noise and possibly high frequency loss. Going direct into mixer with a regular instrument cable would not need a DI.

Since you already used this setup for years you might be ok although I think it is always better to convert to balanced line when going into mixer, regardless of the distance. I use a cheap behringer DI for this type of setup with my hd500 and it works great for me. I used it for going direct to PA mixer and also for recording, no issues. I use parallel out to connect to my amp for monitoring.

zbf

Surely this would depend on the setup of the Pod on page 3 in settings, and the type of mixer you're using.

My personal preference would be to set it as Studio/Direct and use balanced TRS leads.

However, if I was going straight into an amp, I'd set it as Combo Front and use unbalanced TS leads (this would also work into a mixer with a Hi-z input, but your signal would degrade over distance).

I'm using an HD500, but as far as I know the I/O settings are the same.