panaman

i really am extremely happy with my pod. really. but: there can be no excuse for not levelling and normalizing all patches, at least to a degree. this goes for the line6 demos and all the sounds from the good people uploading their stuff to customtone. sure, everybody has their unique equipment, with varying level requirements, but this applies to all patches consisently. i understand that real amp models produce different volumes and effects have other issues with peaks and clipping. thats why i got a modeller. i wanted things sorted out and useable, working together. if i wanted the "real" thing emulated with all its flaws, i could be asking for a bad cable effect simulation with a random button, not visible in the chain, to make things more interesting. above, the sticky "what tones do you want l6 to build" may hold the solution: no need to build, just level the existing ones please. l6 should know best what the best levels are. it may take several manhours, much better than many thousands of customer hours when every1 has to do it individually... meanwhile, we could try to define a standard by uploading a basic tone as a reference for everbody to compare their levels to, if a general agreement on proper level is possible at all . maybe a suggestion on vol and/vs. master settings could help. seems to me all equipment should be able to cope with 2 levels: single coil strat and humbucker gibson. in my setup, humbuckers appear twice as loud. the pod should add sound but no significant volume.

did you put your login data into monkey? top left username password. maybe then it will find its registration. you could also try to log on to customtone before starting monkey so youre already logged in. everytime i update monkey the login is forgotten (by it and me).

on some demo/customtone patches, the drive-bass-mid...vol controls will show greyed out and only work if the little arrow on the pod`s display is above the amp symbol not on dual amp tones i think. couldn`t figure out why. the tone can be re-saved with the arrow in place so it will always come up working.

would the eq go in front or after the screamer?

yes you can midi-control the patches, but it wont be any fun without the pickup: no sound

i tried uploading the zip to customtone after renaming it to h5e, but no luck: internal server error. i guess size does matter. file size is 1823mb (1.78) so i did upload it to mediafire: http://www.mediafire.com/download/7hna9w4ujnkab86/2000h5e.zip not sure how long it will last, get it while you can.

i did download all the hd500 patches from start up to around april 2014. unfortunately, there are "only" 2157 resulting files, some must have been overwritten due to duplicate file names. funny: while the total file size is 8,75mb, they occupy 17mb on the drive due to cluster vs. file size if anyone can tell me how, i could rar and upload them (to customtone? upload and rename the rar to h5e? does size matter here?) or i could mail the rar to somebody with web space

i dont know what the keyboard-sequencer is. if it can handle mutiple midi channels, set the pod to anything other than omni and control it with that specific midi channel. "sequencer" seems to imply it should be able to do that. when i owned a korg z1 i believe i could set a midi channel for each of its programmable arpeggio notes independently. from a daw, just add a new midi track set to a unique midi channel other than omni.

is this "real" impedance circuit an emulated Z impedance circuit or just a switched resistor array?

i wish i could download the original setlists that came with each firmware version without having to reflash just to extract them.

there have always been differences with firmware versions also, especially early on. not always improvemental. i thought when i first got my hd500, it sounded best until my 1st update, to 1.6 i think. even if the modelling is the same, just compiling the code for a new dsp would produce a slightly different response if new opcodes offer shortcuts. in some older microcontrollers, you could not port firmware from internal to external rom because of different timing, it could crash or produce unwanted results. they should have used the extra 20% and given us a stereo version of each of the mono effects. they are mostly around 3 to 6% cpu, couldn`t have been such a big deal. would have made the routing mess a lot more consistent. used to hear some complaints about the 500`s thin sound. i`m all for the trebly twang though. crisp sounds good too now before i opt for a new pod500x: does the 500x like the les paul better than the 500 does? seems to me, with the gibson pickups producing more than twice the volume even if turned all the way down, the pod prefers the strat. my strat always sounds better with the same settings on the pod side and even with the vol on the LP rolled back to same level. (i know about guitar-same issue). i guess i overexpected when i got the LP recently..may have to go for different pups soon.

the vol pedal can be assigned to the amp volume. in the edit software, go to controllers, set controller to exp-1, parameter to ch.vol. set pedal min and max values. in this case, the pedal settings will override the vol knob.

what is the purpose of sending the pod signal to the pc via usb if it cant be heard or recorded in a daw`? i can see how the return signal is fed to the pod only, but then more than 1 soundcard can be used simultaneously, 1 out to/from pod, 1 out from pc soundcard. one problem though: asio drivers allow only 1 same in- and output device

i think any pedal sending midi cc control messages, or even your daw would be great if the pedal assigment could be controlled externally for automation.

You didnt mention which soundcard. its always a good idea to try and get an asio driver for your soundchip. you could try to lower the sample frequency, to 44khz rather than 96, cutting the bulk of data being transferred and processed in half. with both usb and spdif, the data are akready digital and do not need another a-d conversion, which is a major part of latency. some soundcards allow to use monitoring which is basically a shortcut from in to out. creamware suggests for audio pc usage to disable hyperthreading on the cpu. while it may be great for number crunching in repetitive tasks (fractals, movie conversion), it seems to slow down others because the pipes have to be preloaded based on predictions. if false, they need to be flushed and reloaded again before processing resumes. so, a few milliseconds can be sqeezed out, but the last one or two will really cost you. however, with the demise of the old pci bus/slots on newer mainboards, you can watch the prices drop for used pci i/o cards. my creamware cards come with a nominal latency of 0.5 ms stable , hammerfall with 2 or 3 ms (i think), both not noticeable to me. (latency being counted one way, thus needs to be doubled for in + out routing. be warned though: the creamware 3 dsp card will only give you basic functionality, you will want the additional one or two pieces of the 6 dsp card to be able to use both the 16 ch mixer, a few effects and the 31 band stereo graphic eq all at the same time (if you have 2 or 3 pci slots free) , or the 18 dsp external rack unit @ 4000 € ... highly addictive and ruining...

I would, please. mine has started to give double clicks when pushing down, which can lead to unwanted results. thank You

You may need to re-install the driver, then select the pod as Your soundcard. After updating to 2.20, and probably plugging into a different usb socket, the monkey had major issues detecting the pod. depending on Your windows version, the drivers may have to be reinstalled every time a new usb is used.

i have seen some tones where the amp cannot be controlled unless you move the little arrow to/above the amp icon in the display. don`t know why but it helps. while the arrow position is usually saved along with the tone, it doesn`t with some of these misbehaving ones, meaning whenever you call up that tone, you will again have to move the arrow over to the amp position if you want to use the drive-bass-mid- etc. knobs on that tone. below the "FX" - "AMPS" etc. header, there is the little LED symbol all the way on the left of each effect, left of the effect icon, to click it on or off, and it will say "on" or "off" below the LED it will be visible once/if a fx-type is selected from the fx-type pull down menu on the right, same row.

one thing Creamware recommends for their dsp pci cards is to switch off hyperthreading on the pc cpu. while HT may be great for bit crunching tasks, where one algorhythm is applied to generate a fractal, convert video or whatever, it may introduce latency on the audio signal. also make sure the cpu/energy settings are configured for optimal performance, not for optimal battery life, where cpu and bus are clocked down for energy saving. disable all unused hardware like wlan, parallel and serial bus, webcams, firewire, touchscreen, cardreaders in the bios, not in system-hardware. try getting asio drivers for Your sound chip. try a lower resolution (800x600 rather than full hd) latency happens both on the input and output paths, try monitoring the pc input rather than the output, splitting up Your signal before it goes to pc. its a compromise, but will give You an instant response of your playing, the wet signal from pc can then be mixed in. (some effects take some time to build up anyway).

here`s a guy giving us the ultimate fix for line 6 engineers` ignorance concerning the mess with the file formats and portabiity and all you can say is "Don't know why it was updated - maybe just for the name change." ? usually the reason for updates is for to make things better, just a rough guess on my part. i find the comments in this thread annoying and belittling. you have clearly not wasted any time with the program lately. I do use and enjoy the conversion utility. line6 should have come up with it themselves in the 1st place and not waited for a unpaid user to do their job. maybe if you checked out the latest version and saw all it can do, would change your attitude, even though it is easier to drag+drop a single tone to xEdit of course. i`m kind of hoping the author could find the time to dig into the edit software and start making it a little better too (1 version of edit for all models, which knows what the attached pod can and cannot do and convert things automatically, or a cool gui for the conversion util incorporating some of the edit functionality). if edit could for instance graphically display mono and stereo connections between the devices "in the path a and b" other than with just a single line, this subject which only a select few can grasp could be made so much more transparent and easier to understand... i haven`t gotten into win8 yet (and dont intend to), but the message "is unsafe and could harm" (particularly funny from the prism edition) is a false alarm and of the same category as "this hardware hasnt passed the ms compatibility test" - just click install anyway (not recommended for software from dubious sources though). if the file extensions are hidden you probably need to adjust your folder/view options (unhide file extensions), this will make pc life easier.

if your pc doesn`t have midi, you can get usb to midi adapters cheap (less than 10 €), try searching: usb midi logilink to get an idea. 2 or more adapters can be used simultaneously/independently. (may not apply to all brands/models). the built-in soundcard functionality is optional, doesn`t have to be used for midi. in amplitube, you will still have to edit/map the midi channels/codes though. happy midiing

i have had the same thing since the latest update. many patches, maybe 25%, are mute. (edit/usb not connected). i found if i go to tuner and back to the patch, the sound returns. not a particular elegant workaround, but nothing else helped so far. i also get the impression the sound is not like it used to be, even though not dramatically bad.

hi gtlazer, i did (again) and find nothing offensive. if you set to direct, a spdif signal will be routed directly to the power stage (probably digital), while a analog signal will be a/d`d and then goes the same route. in this case, surround effects don`t affect the signal, they are bypassed. if you have a dolby-surround source like dvd, bluray or sat receiver, AND have selected surround audio tracks as output, you`ll get surround coming from the speaker it was mixed for, meaning all speakers will be active. the HD is not a surround source, thus sound from the front left and right speakers only, mono or stereo depending on the HD signal chain, with both analog or spdif. there may be amps that use all speakers on a stereo signal, but none i know of. there are artefacts in the stereo signal though, which can be interpreted by the dsp in the amp as surround information, much like the quadraphonic record players did for vinyl. mono signals usually cannot be surroundized. a glassy clean tone will not do much. (a delayed, flanged, dimensioned and otherwise modulated tone surely will) from stereo audio, with the amps built in effects processor/dsp, you often get pianos from the rear speakers (probably from the natural phasing of the 3 strings per key) and anything which is placed to the extreme left and right in the mix or has heavy effects applied. there are additional improvements like spatializers, which i also use, both for the HD and listenung to music. please note: gman talks about a home theater audio system, not a hi-end amp. so i think he`s a bit like me, likes effects and will not want to go direct.

surround highly recommended dont know why the 2 posts above would suggest to disable the surround amps features, no need to get one then. you`ll have 8 speakers sitting there, with sound coming from the front 2 only. what a waste. so i suggest to get one with good pseudo surround programs. these will output certain portions of your signal from different speakers, depending on the stereo effects used in the HD. many phase and delay related effects, as well as dimension, will produce good results. (a mono effect in the chain will more or less kill it) in fact, ive been thinking about removing the mono L resistor from the HD output to make the effect (stereo separation) even stronger. using a center speaker is usually for speech, mine is always turned off for better stereo . with the subwoofer, you have to be considerate towards the neighbours. the only thing is: unless you mic the x.1 speakers, each individually, since surround amps dont usually output their dsp processed signal for recording, you will be the only 1 to hear the effect, it will not be reproducable on anybody elses setup unless they use the same amp/settings. also, you may be disappointed hearing your patches in stereo-only afterwards i have not tried the xlr outputs, and cannot comment on the HD300/400. results may vary. still highly recommended, you will not want to go back. also good for your hifi music experience. you will wonder how you did without.

the real bomber will be the tone import handling when 500x tones cannot be loaded to the 500, that is my biggest concern