DunedinDragon

I'm not sure I understand what you're looking for in sound but for the last 8 years or so I've played live using modeling either in amp form and now with the HD500X and I've encountered none of the limitations you're talking about. In fact I just recently changed my rig so that I'm sending a direct line to the PA mixing board, and a 1/4" output to a powered monitor speaker onstage and I couldn't be happier with the result. You're right in saying a monitor doesn't handle sound in the same way as a guitar cabinet. Acoustically speaking it handles it MUCH better. Guitar cabinets are designed to not be full range flat response (FRFR) speakers. They're designed specifically to accentuate certain frequencies associated with electric guitars. That's fine if all of your effects and mic'ing of the cabinet are done externally. But a POD is a self-contained unit that provides a virtual signal chain, which includes a guitar cabinet and various mic's in various positions. To push that through yet another limited range cabinet and mic after the completion of the signal chain only serves to color the sound further. I understand if you're working a silent stage why in-ears would be necessary. And for the most part in-ears provide a fairly flat and full range duplication of the POD's signal chain, unless it's colored by the person running the monitor mix. If you're not running a silent stage as we do in my band, a decent FRFR powered speaker is the best solution I've found for giving me a true representation of my guitar's tone mixed with the rest of the on stage instruments and voices and what it is sounding like to the audience once it all comes out of the PA. Maybe I'm old school in this regard, but I expect all of the musicians in the band to be professionals and control their volumes and listen to how they're mixing with everyone else, not just listen to themselves. And this is the problem I see with in-ears. In-ears can easily decieve your impression of what the band sounds like overall. Since in-ears are a separate mix from the FOH mix you have no idea what you're sounding like to the audience, and given the lack of skills I've witnessed in most people running a sound board, I'm in no hurry to trust the fate of the band's overall sound to them. The simplest and best solution if you're having problems hearing your guitar attack is to have the offending parties who are too loud to grow up, be professional, control their volume relative to the rest of the band, and listen to the whole band and the part they play in it so that it sounds like a true band, and not a bunch of individuals pounding out noise that somewhat resembles a song. While it's true there are many articles about tube amps being superior to modeled sound, I would hesitate to call them research. True research would indicate they used a double-blind test, which they don't do. They just depend on their own purely subjective opinion. The question is, how are you going to compare a tube amp's open air output to an output from a POD that is simulating (at a minimum) a guitar cabinet and specific mic? The POD outputs a studio-ready signal, the stand alone amp does not. The only viable "researched" way to do this would be to record both the POD's recorded output and the tube amp's recorded output which duplicates the amp and mic'ing technique used on the POD, then have objective, independent listeners determine (without knowing which is which) what sounds best. There a countless numbers of these type of double-blind tests on YouTube, and there is NO consistency in how people vote on which sound is tube and which is modeled. Which tells you the "researched" articles you've seen are pretty much baseless and totallly subjective. That's hardly science.

If you are setup with Studio Direct in the POD and are plugged into the speaker directly from the 1/4" output into the 1/4" input, then the speaker is receiving the correct level of signal and there is no reason, short of a speaker malfunction, for it not to work. It has absolutely nothing to do with the type of music. The speaker would receive the same level of signal if you were to mic a traditional guitar cabinet. If this speaker wouldn't be able to handle that, then the speaker design is garbage. This assumes, of course, that you have the proper volume and tone levels set on the PA speaker. I always advise people to set the volume and tone knobs (if they have them) at the mid point which is typically the 12 o'clock position and use the master volume on the pod to control the signal level to the PA speaker. If the speaker starts clipping (typically there's an intermittent red light that flashes on the PA speaker when it clips and you'll hear some unpleasant distortion) you can turn the speaker volume knob up and reduce the master volume on the POD as that would mean you're overdriving the PA's allowable signal with the signal coming from the POD. If you have the speaker volume set all the way up and you're still clipping then you need more wattage in your speaker which can only be solved by getting a more powerful powered speaker. According to the documentation on the speaker it's 180 watts which is not huge, but should be adequate for most uses as a guitar monitor.

I agree with Uber Guru on this. The only real advantage you gain in this situation is a better user interface for designing/changing presets. But it's highly unlikely your requirements are going to be such that you'll need a lot of the more advanced features the Helix provides over the HD500X..especially at 3 times the price. As far as using HD's live I'm sure if you look long enough you might find some videos of bands playing live using HD500X. Many of us in here, myself included, use them exclusively for live performances. But if you're new to modeling you'll have your hands full mastering how to use the features of the HD500X much less the more advanced features of the Helix. Given that your primary focus is on doing cover material, most of the demands in that style of music are fairlly rudimentary and the HD500X will hardly break a sweat dealing with them. I'd say go ahead with the HD500X and get comfortable developing your workflow for how you'll use it live. That's far more important at this point and you can probably get some good ideas of how to set it up and use it in live situations from experienced users here in this forum.

Exactly!!! You have to bear in mind what the design focus of the POD (and particularly the HD series) is, which is basically a simulation of what occurs in a classical recording studio environment, or some advanced live concert stage setups, to create a proper signal chain, with the result being fed to a mixing board or some form of full range/flat response type of output. It does leave open the option for an FX loop as that could be key to getting other external effects into that signal chain, but that's very different than looping through an external amp. You wouldn't likely see that sort of setup in a traditional recording studio either. The closer you align yourself with the design focus of the POD, the more you'll be able to optimize what it can do for you, If you choose to deviate from the designed purpose of anything, it may work...but probably not very well. That's why Jeeps don't commonly compete in road races and Corvettes don't typically go off-road driving.

I seem to be doing fine with all those "ridiculous lifeless default amp settings" coming out of my powered monitor. Maybe it's your monitor not giving you a true flat response.

I use an Epiphone Sheraton semi-hollow body guitar for developing all my presets. These presets are then used live with my Les Paul standard, my Gretsch 5420T, and my Strat and I rarely have any problems. On heavier distortion patches I follow the guidelines Peter Hanmer discusses in his second YouTube video on EQ'ing distorted patches to tighten them up. Basically it involves raising the low cut filter on the modeled amp to up around 100 hz, then putting a parametric eq filter in toward the end of the chain to remove some of the piercing high frequencies at roughly 3000 hz. This gives the distortion a tighter focus with less mud. The low cut filter on the amp would be particularly important for a semi-hollow body guitar as that's where some of the natural guitar resonance comes from that makes the sound muddy on distorted settings. This seems to fix most of the issues I would run into with my stage guitars. Of course all of this is guesswork since your description of "doesn't cut it for me" is a bit too broad to diagnose what's wrong with your tones. But you might try some of what I described above and see if it helps.

Well...that's JAVA for you..."Write Once, Debug everywhere". :lol:

I reallly suspect now that you've worked out getting the TS112A working at home you shouldn't have much problem once you plug in at church. Just ask the sound tech to give you a flat EQ and a hi-pass filter on your channel and I imagine it's going to be pretty close to what you set at home. This isn't Indian Rocks Baptist in Clearwater by chance is it?

The 4CM was developed to address the deficiencies in multiFX unit's ability to break up the signal chain on both sides of the amp, not for modelers like the HD500X. Tone suck or not, it seems to me the OP would be better off with just a multiFX board if that's what he wants to do rather than a something like the HD500X. There's no doubt you could do it by leaving out the amp in the POD's signal chain and just using the default null amp and mixer, but it's really not designed to work that way. And whenever you kludge something together like that you're asking for all sorts of odd behaviors. Not to mention losing a MAJOR benefit of what the HD500X does.

I think I've experienced something similar when switching between tones and losing the pedal. In reality I don't "lose" the pedal. I found that the volume pedal doesn't get sync'd or calibrated with the change from one patch to another. I can fix it easily by simply rocking the pedal back to zero and then back up and the pedal is working. This only happens when I'm connected to the edit program. I've never had it happen when the board is operating on it's own. It seems to be some kind of bug in the software relating to the volume pedal. I have noticed it hasn't happened as often since I changed my workflow and I save changes to the patch by hitting the save button on the 500X which forces the sync to go the other way (back to the HD Edit program). As far as getting your output levels to match, normally I can do this by modifying the amp's volume level on the patches to get them in line with each other. Occassionally I may have to tweak the output level of some boost or distortion pedal earlier in the chain if the amp volume it being overwhelmed by the output of the boost/distortion effect. I usually do this by selecting the patch with the overall lowest output volume but with the highest amp volume setting to use as the reference for aligning the others. I figure it doesn't matter if they're aligned to a lower volume since I can set the master volume to bring up the level on all the patches and keep them sync'd up.

It's probably just as well that you decided against wireless. I was using wireless on my previous setup but I dumped it once I started using the FRFR style setup. The dynamics and frequency response was really limited compared to a direct plug in. I didn't notice it so much when I was using a normal guitar amp, but then those cabinets and speakers are pretty limited on their own so the difference wasn't very noticeable.

I'm referring to when the monitor is laying on it's side in a standard floor monitor wedge position, but I suspect you'd get something of the same effect if it was standing up on the floor. The DXR12 monitor has a switch that corrects the bass loading that occurs in this scenario. All powered monitors have this same effect, but you typically have to correct it via the tone knobs on the speaker itself. It may be similar to the contour button you have on the Alto, but I'm not sure. You have to be a little sensitive when doing this type of thing because powered monitors act more like a PA system and you can get fooled if you're outside of it's cone of projection. I try and keep about 10 feet away from the monitor and more or less centered on it's sound cone. Regardless I would imagine it might sound a bit different from your stereo speakers as stereo speakers aren't really FRFR type speakers. That's why I build my patches on the monitor so that I don't get surprised by the sound that comes out of the FOH live system. It tends to match up a lot better. I also use that same Yamaha monitor for my guitar stage monitor so I get a pretty true representation of what the audience is hearing.

One of the tricks I use for this situation is I have a powered PA speaker that I use to develop my patches at home. In my case I use a Yamaha DXR12 set to the monitor position which helps reduce the bass response from accumulated low frequencies when set on the floor as a monitor. What you're really trying to accomplish is pushing the setup through a full range flat response system. That's where most of the surprises come from. The vast majority of stereo speakers have some coloration added to the tone as do headsets which is necessary for a good sound on commercially recorded tracks but can really throw your tone off significantly once you go direct into a PA.