cabir

thanks akeron. i've seen those posts before, but they seem more like speculation to me. there's really nothing to confirm that. everyone's linking to that cirrus logic converter, and i like the pod's output sound, so i'm not saying that it sounds bad at all, but it's hard for me to believe that the converters in apogee's flagship line and line6's are the same. the only way that would be possible is if the converters technology has reached a point where even the most basic converters can do what the higher end one can, or that apogee is openly fooling everyone saying they're using the best components out there. and i can't see much in those images. if i could see cs4274 written on some IC, it would make sense. thanks anyway.

haha, no i didn't take it that way either. i'm almost always open to discussion. the points are valid both ways yes. infact just yesterday i when i was setting up the mainstage rig, i actually did throw in a few channel strips to serve as categories for bass, drums, rhythm, rhythm add-ons, keys, guitars and route all DAW layers into these. and the idea to include these was to use them as sends to different outputs for FOH, or to send them all to master and get a single stereo.

well, i guess you're right about the sonically group sections. there's really can't be any argument against that. the mix/master point wasn't about mastering the live performance on a laptop in realtime at all..! it was, at the very basic level, that every element playing out of the laptop, whether a backing track, or a midi instrument, or a guitar or a loop would be from a mix/master that translates well across different speakers and venues, with enough room to compensate for any margin for error that would be, because it would be playing out of a channel strip that has the settings to blend it well with the rest of the mix. when i said i mix and master music, i generally meant that i understand balancing instruments and frequencies, and i have enough faith in my work for "or your settings for your high end might be jammin' at home on a synth, but in the room, you're destroying people's ears." to not happen. the idea behind this whole thing was that as a solo performer, i'd be playing a lot of small venues where they might not have a full time FOH engineer. they might have a PA or get their musicians to get their own PA(hire, rental, whatever), but for such cases one needs to be prepared. which is why i mentioned some of the solo acts perviously, all of whom do exactly that. sure, nothing replaces the sensibilities a good FOH engineer for a gig. your point overall is still very valid, and as of reading this i'm once again swaying more towards sending more than just a summed stereo mix to FOH. thank you for that, i genuinely mean it.

thanks bjnette... individual replies below... ya i can't hear any difference at a studio volume level atleast. yep, i understand and agree. well, everything is happening in mainstage running on the laptop, and the final output (stereo) is going out thru the pod as a sound card. so the laptop is connected to a bunch of usb devices which are all controlling various aspects of the music in MainStage, whether it's the mix, or midi instruments or looping or effects etc. the guitar is plugged into the pod, getting processed, but isn't going straight out. that too is being routed into mainstage for post effects and processing, which is being mixed with the master out. not using the laptop soundcard at all. maybe to connect a pair of headphones for a click track or something at the most. no sure yet, haven't started gigging. but there's balanced outs on the hd, so shouldn't be a problem. plus this length thing will vary from venue to venue anyway. that could definately work too. i want to travel the lightest possible actually. so i'm probably going to get something like a korg nanokontrol and use it as a control surface for the mixer in mainstage, so almost everything will be done in the box. thats what i thought ;D. thanks man. all help appreciated.

thanks for the inputs hdprojohn, you have a fair point. this is what i think.... i've actually considered sending 4 stereos signals to FOH, with different layers etc, but the thing is the a lot my music is experimental, and the general production on every track is not the same. if every song had a bass guitar and drums playing in their respective places, i could give those out separately to the engineer, but the number of things that change in every track it so large, that for me to explain the whole set to a different engineer at every different gig would not be possible. infact, i very strongly feel that the engineer having control over my layers and guitar tone would actually introduce the probability of a screw up. yup, every room and PA is different, but think of it this way : if you like a song (anything from GnR or coldplay or <insert name here>), you don't take a different mix/master to play that track at different places. it's the same one. similarly, if i have a song which has 50 layers on average, it's not like different rooms will make the guitar louder or the drums softer, the different room would affect frequency bands and that can easily be rectified with an EQ either on my master bus or the FOH engineers desk. some venues would have too much reverb or too less, again, it's a simple adjustment in my master bus. so much so that once i play a venue, i could just save the master channel strip as a preset for the next time i play there, so the room acoustics are all compensated for, and i don't have to change things in the mix everytime. having said that, apart from general sound production, i also mix and master music, so stems and channel strips from Logic pretty much loads up in Mainstage as is, and i don't have to worry about the mix being very different from the original production, except that i might choose to treat the production differently for a live setting, maybe make them a little less crowded. and there's a ton of musicians these days who're all one man acts, with a laptop and a bunch of midi devices and they handle everything themselves. i don't think it should really be a problem. (benn jordan/the flashbulb, joe gore, christian fennesz, dualist inquiry to name a few) this is my pov, and i'm open to discussion about it. would be great if more people can chime in about this issue too. maybe i really am missing something. on a side note, i'm from india, and 9 out of 10 gig stories are about how the engineer just didn't know what he was doing. i spoke to one of the best in the biz live engineers here recently about some other questions i had, and the first thing he asked me when i told him about my setup/rig was "why do you want to give the engineer all that control in the first place. since you know your music better than them, just do it yourself." this is when i was still thinking of doing the 4 stereo tracks to FOH.

sure man! :)) thats very weird about the 8i6. thats a higher end interface in the scarlett line, and almost everyone plugs in their guitar/bass direct into the interface these day at some point in time. anyway, hope it works out well for you. i used to use a native instruments interface, then once i got the pod hd i used it for all the DI recording through guitar rig for a very long time, and it just worked like it should have. i use the mixer volume to adjust the gain setting for the clean signal.

i don't have the hd pro, but a bean, so i'm going to answer considering the basic stuff in all the hd series is similar... if you're looking for a straight up DI tone to reamp with software sims, just record a mono dry signal from the hd pro via usb. it's clean, and there's almost no colour to it. i personally don't see the point in going through multiple AD/DA conversions to get something that straight forward. you could try the same going through the scarlett instead to see if your prefer it's preamp and AD converter over that of the pod. is there a pad function on the scarlett somewhere for the active pickups. or you could turn down the gain if it's clipping... on another note, if you to go through the pod, i'd suggest trying out the "vintage pre" model on the clean guitar sound. it really does some wonders sometimes. though i use the pod hd mostly for amp tones, i use a clean DI tone with the "vintage pre" model on the pod going into the computer where i amp it with guitar rig or pod farm. the sound has a lot more character and better overtones than without it. or you could use a similar model in the software itself before the amp sim.

hullo fellow citizens, i'm planning to take my music project live soon, and since the pod hd bean/desktop has balanced outs, i'm thinking of using it to send a stereo sum of everything straight to FOH... i'm going to be running a laptop setup with apple's mainstage, so there'll be backing tracks, live looping, midi parts, effects, and guitar ofcourse. it's kind of a one man band setup. i was thinking of sending a stereo summed mix to FOH from mainstage thru the hd bean's outs, and while the HD bean works great in my bedroom setup, i was wondering is anyone has any experience on the sound quality of the DA converters on the HD series. now i understand that the output of the HD amp tone sounds fantastic and that also involves the DA conversion, but i'm concerned with a slightly larger picture here in this case... there's no doubt that the HD amps and effects sound great going straight when playing live, but that is mixed with a ton of other instruments and the output is not heard in isolation. so from where i'm looking at it, since i'm sending the entire music thru it, i just want to be safe and know that the quality is not going to be short of amazing. another question, how loud are these balanced out any way, again, in a FOH setting. they're pretty loud at home. i read up something about the pod x3 series using cirrus logic converters, but there's no info on the hd series converters that i could find. would be great if someone could throw light on that too. i have a native instruments card with cirrus logic converters, and honestly, i really cant tell the difference between the NI interface and the L6 pod hd bean interface sound output wise. thanks guys, cabir.

hi, wanted to check if the 2 1/4in outputs on the pod studio ux1 are balanced on unbalanced... the specs page doesn't mention anything, but i think i read somewhere they're balanced.. not too sure though... thanks kabir.

i use it similarly for my clean electric tone. no amp, just the raw sound of the pickups going through the vintage pre with a tiny bit of chorus.

hey bjnette, glad it helps man. :)) ya it does add the tiny bit of a nice saturation i like. i'm using it on my main lead tone with gain on 50 and output on 75 going into the divided 9/15 amp going into the supro cab. i'm getting such a smooth creamy tone, it could put the bogner ecstacy out of business ;D i'm not even using it for too much high end saturation, just to add that layer of shimmer/specular on the tones. it's working very well.

edgar, i'm pasting a relevant part of the original post below... if you're using the vintage pre on a mic plugged into the pod, sure, you want to put it up front in the signal chain. but i'm using it to saturate my processed electric guitar tone, so in this signal chain : amp > cab > mic > vintage pre. my plan is to sweeten the signal from the mic that is being used on the cab. hence i try using it after the amp. ofcourse as i mentioned, that isn't giving a pleasant sound, too much distortion. so even in this situation the vintage pre works better before the amp, which means that i use it up front in the chain and it is adding saturation to the clean signal coming form the pickups, and then sending that into the amp. hope i've explained clearly.

oh ok, then you need to tweak the controls in the amp head to get more lows and mids, since that's where the preamp is. EQing at the amp level gets the basic tone shape in place. which can then be post EQed to suit the mix. it's easy to cut something that is there, but hard to boost something that isn't there. so use the EQ on the amp controls to shape your raw tone which has a certain bass-mid-treble balance to your taste. then let the engineer EQ it more if he feels it's needed to fit in the mix. i think he said, "it woulld make a sound guy’s job much easier if I had the tone thicker to begin with" because he was having to boost it too much to get the desired body in the tone. so it would be nice if your raw tone had the basic 'meat' so he's only refining/fine tuning the sound. hope this helps.

the audience guy is pretty much saying the same thing the engineer is saying. trebly tones are thin and sometimes brittle and harsh sounding. fatness comes from the right mix of lows and mids. well, mostly mids, but the lows kind of balance the whole tone and give it sponginess. so basically the sound guy wants you to eq your patch to have more of a low/mid body, which you should do at the amp level. if you've got the lows and mids turned up and are still getting a thin tone, try using a different mic or cab model. are you going straight to FOH or going into an amp on stage...?

well, it's actually a mic preamp, so it can't go before the amp. i understand what you're trying to say, but my post is about a module which does a simple saturation thing on all types of audio signal that i pass through the pod. noise ratios, analog vs. digital, phase testing to see what is added/subtracted from the signal etc is not the issue here. the 'vintage pre' is already good for what it is, in other words it works for me about half the time, but i wouldn't say its "all purpose". so i'm either looking to see ways in which others are using it, or letting line 6 know that a couple more mic preamps, or a simple harmonic saturation plugin would be welcome in future updates.

hello, back after a long time. so i must start by saying that i'm very impressed with the inclusion and working of the vintage pre in the pod hd. i've been wanting a harmonic saturation module for a while in the pod so this is a real win. i would however like to say that while in some cases it works sublte wonders, it doesn't do the trick in all cases. and it would be nice if we could get more mic pre's like this in the future update, or simply a harmonic saturation module equipped to saturate just about anything. i must add that i'm not using the vintage pre on mics on the xlr input, i'm using it before the amp to get some sweetness in the guitar tone. using it post amp usually end in a distorted sound, and not the good kinds. while there are no rules in the digital space, i feel since this is a 'mic pre', shouldn't it logically be placed after the amp (mic controls are in the amp)... hence the request. would be great if others who're using it could share their ideas. anyway, thank you for reading, and have the funs. :))