innovine

I noticed that there is a good amount off hiss coming from my dt25 with the master volume turned fully down. This seems constant as I raise the master (other hiss from the guitar comes in). This also seems related to the topology, with the treadplate being the worst. Any idea what is going on? I thought the master being down would turn the sound OFF, but all it seems to do is cut the guitar off, leaving this hiss. Anyone else get the same behaviour?

Monkey is a badly coded pos.

I would like to hear some views on connecting up my pod 500hd and dt25 to my macbook for the purposes of a) looping, layering and general composing and song writing, and b) recording tracks with a good tone. Since I don't have an external soundcard, I'm looking at using the pod as a soundcard but can't figure out a good reamping strategy in connection with the dt25. The dt25 sits between my monitors (which play the drums and bass) and I like hearing the dt25 speaker more than going through the pod to the laptop and to the headphone out to the mixer and finally monitors. I'd like to be able to catch the clean tones, and send my live guitar part to the dt25, and sending the recorded tracks to the pod and then to the monitors, with reamping as I'm still working on tones. Is this possible to set up? do I need to add an additional soundcard?

No point in upgrading the dt if you are using pod and line6 link, you already get the same functionality via the pod. The update is useful for those using 4cm or without a pod.

If dsp is your thing, you'd be better off with max/msp on a laptop, or pd on a raspberry pi.

I asked this previously and got some answer. Can't recall what it wase I think maybe no advantage :) the search might find that post. I get a pretty low level out of my xlr outs, so I tried them through mic preamps and it was ok. I use the pod for recording though so I hear through the monitors. Dt25s just for being loud and rocking out. I've yet to bother micing it, as I haven't done any serious recording recently

Fourier transform, find the fundamental, filter, shift, reverse the transform, wet/dry mix, done.

Instead of dialing in your tone, you get all of them at once.

Recording two different tracks always sounds fuller imho, if you are talking about studio use. The small timing differences in the takes add up to a rich texture. Just delaying and using chorus etc on a single guitar adds phase effects and just doesn't sound as big. Might be ok for live use

The fx send and return on the pod are noisy and drop the gain a bit. Avoid them unless you have a strong need for pod fx in the amps loop

Works fine for me

What latency do you get from your laptop? It depends heavily on the drivers, and you can probably get below 10ms with the right setup. The latency is caused by many reasons, one main one is that the cpu is often needed for other tasks. So audio processing is suspended while the cpu goes and works on something else like your antivirus or drawing the screen or whatever. During this time, your soundcard is still receiving (and/or transmitting audio). the driver sets up a little buffer with the next few miliseconds of audio in it, so when the cpu is busy, you .on't run out of audio data to process. Then after a while the cpu gets back to dealing with your daw, and refills the buffer, and goes off to do other tasks again. Latency and this buffer are very closely linked. A small buffer means a smaller delay, but when it gets too low the buffer will empty before the cpu gets a chance to add more data, producing very nasty tearing and popping noises. You of course need such a buffer on the input (queue up incoming audio until cpu can deal with it) and on the output. The OS is demanding enough, and general purpose enough so that the latency is noticable. Dedicated machines aren't dealing with a webbrowser or a usb bus or a wireless network or hard drive and hundreds more background tasks, meaning that there is much less competition for resources (though it is still there). The latency is low, but still there, only analog signal paths are latency free. The voltage in the analog signal chain rises and falls basically instantly through the whole signal chain, but digital gear has queues and buffers in many many places. Zero latency is impossible, just standing 2m from your speakers add ~6ms for the sound to travel to your ear. But if your fancy laptop is saying the latency is several times that, then you can probably adjust it down

Doesn't seem to harm apples sales

Because it's mostly just people whining and complaining and demanding features, without knowing the first thing about what the market response is, what the technical constraints are, and so on. Do you think line6 are unable to come up with any ideas themselves? Do you expect them to dedicate a person to listening to feedback such as 'looper is a nightmare to use' or 'how about adding wifi/bluetooth'?

I would like to try a dual amp setup, using my 500hd and dt25 for one amp tone, and a second amp in mono out one of the xlr outs to a pa as second tone. But I can't seem to separate the tones. Any suggestions?

Get an interface that supports spdif, don't bother with converters, they are generally of poor quality. FYI, the pods spdif output will stop working if you use the line6 link to a dt25 or dt50.

I've been thinking a bit more about this. One of the appeals of a 'real' tube amp is that it sounds good. Another factor is that it's pretty simple to operate, you turn it on, there's a few rough dials to choose your tone and off you go. But if you look a little closer at that picture, there is a LOT of work gone into the design of the amp to get it there. The values of every component has been carefully chosen so that the amp sounds nice. The circuit designs, and even each capacitor and resistor no doubt had it's value adjusted many times before settling on something. These are ALSO variables you could tweak, but since that tweaking requires soldering and high voltage electronics, it's generally not done. Plus, the designers have already tweaked these machines so much that they sound great from the start and further tweaking often would be detrimental... Now, onto the dream rig. Yes, it's modelling the amps pretty well (close enough so I am not gonna complain - it's cheap, and it's many amps in one, so you can't complain that it's not exactly the same as each one of them. Close enough for me to be happy). BUT! Here's the real difference. The dream rig product doesn't sound good AT ALL from the get-go. The presets were put together in a hurry by some drunken monkeys, and as soon as you start editing and switching amps you'll run into huge volume jumps and incorrect gain staging and stereo routing issues and preamp selections with or without cab modelling, cab choices, mics, and on and on. If you look at it entirely the other way around, the dt25 and pod500hd combo is EXCELLENT at producing bad tones, bad levels, confusion, complexity and frustration, but tube amps suck at doing these things. Line6 have not polished this into a smooth running, easy to use product. That's their decision, but it means that a large part of the tweaking and adjusting to get _ consistently_ good sounds has been sold to the consumer under a title of 'flexibility'. I'd be OK with that if they provided enough info in their manuals to actually understand the modelling processes and signal flows, but they didn't, which is my only gripe. If I am expected to do the job of sound designer for them, I need to actually understand the gear, not have to guess and 'use my ears' all the time. You need to use your brain too.

'every change recuires you to'.. exactly. which means I rarely change it any more :) I can dial in my tone on the amp without it even being turned on. The simplicity of the controls is very nice. With the pod connected, I find I add more effects, experience different gain staging, with different eqs to fine tune, etc etc In the end I think this is bad. It leads me into endless tone chasing rather than playing. The simple and restricted options on the amp lead me to being happy with 'close enough', and I appreciate not being tempted to add an eq or something forea tiny betterment. I settle for less, because less is often more. More time to get the magic from the fingers, as you pointed out. I agree with radatat that the flexibility is amazing, but its also a horrible distraction. I don't need to tweak my patches for each song, or each verse. That way madness lies. Each to their own of course, but I've found that the dream rig flexibility is bad. Get two or three good tones and make do with that, stop fiddling around. OP is just caught in tone chasing, exasperated by the options available. When I got my gear, I wasn't really sure what tone I was after, so playing with ¨e different amp models was very educational. Now I'm settled on two. And if I get bored I can find some more. But its important to limit myself. I uninstalled the firmware upgrade for the same reasons.

I've disconnected my pod500 and just use my dt25 like a standard two channel amp with a pedal on front. Does the job and no distractions. The dream rig is just a tweak nightmare, and if you can't settle on something and take control of it then you should eliminate all the options which are distracting you. I'm a very technical kind of guy and have a lot of midi gear all working together, so its not an ability thing. I abandoned the dream rig configuration for now because the complexity outweighed the flexibility. Perhaps you should try the same. Or just stick to a single amp model and basic fx. Unless you're in a real serious cover band you should be able to make do with a much simpler setup

I expect improvements to the fx. The filters are crass, and overly resonant. I'd assume there is a lot of code reuse with the m13 so this might be realistic. THey better add reamping support over usb. Also, it'd help to have the spdif active when the line6 link is connected, but I won't hold my breath, I think line6 dont care enough about cobplex setups and try only sofar as to appear like they support things, add a few contacts round the back and it looks like it'll do anything.. REalistically, I bet they add a few amps, cos that is the stu#f that easily sells. If they go that way, I'll be looking at kemper. Line6 need to improve their small technical details if they want to keep my business

Line6 have done a very poor job of documenting the dream rig as a complete product (and also as individual parts :) you can spot this simply by seeing how they've divided the forum into pod, amp and variax sections but nothing for dream rig, or interconnections. For something that is supposed to be well integrated, there is a lot of confusion, not just with the users but also in the support from line6 themselves. Its a smelly mess, unfortunately.

This is for home recording, at low volume, mostly for when I play electric drums. I thought it might be nice to run the bass through the amp, but I can also run it through the floor monitors which I use for the drums, or entirely in headphones. Just curious about my options. I guess the best recording sound is hd500 direct into the computer but it sure feels better with a separate amp

Any opinions on running a bass guitar into hd500 flip top with a dt25 connected? For home use only. Will this stress the dt25 speaker, and if not, will it sound like lollipop anyway, due to the speakers frequency response?

why not put that eq in the amps fx loop instead? The hd500 fx loop is noisy and loses some of the signal gain

I don't agree with the numbers being thrown about here. If the hd500 was 90-95% as good as a tubescreamer, then why is a tubescreamer worth about 25% of the hd500? With tons of amps and pedals thrown in there, you'd think the price would be sky high if the quality was equal. Do you mean to say that you can take a couple of vintage amps worth thousands of dollars, add 30 effects, bundle it all into an intelligent, flexible easy to carry board, and only charge a tiny fraction of the original gears cost? It's cheap for a reason. That all said, it is quite good value for money. But having played my hd500 and DT25 with ac30 and screamer model, alongside a real ac-30 with a real ts9, I can see, feel and hear why one setup is very cheap, and one very expensive.