louper

The amp emulation and effects are totally acceptable for the price. The sound of the amp itself is totally acceptable. I guess i should mention that all the presets i use are custom programmed. I was not really happy with presets i downloaded from the Amplifi cloud. And finding ones you might be interested in using the ios app's search facilities is less than ideal for me. So when i do find something in the ballpark, i then pretty heavily tweak it so that it works for my particular personal playing style. The ios app's editor is totally acceptable for custom editing of presets. It's very easy to use. The fact that there are only 4 preset memories in the amp itself is a big limitation for me personally. I bought this when it first came out at the beginning of the year and it is now the end of June, and as far as i know, the USB port is still not working. Please correct me if i have a mis-conception about this. Using a mike to record this amp kind of defeats the entire purpose of owning it, so the fact that i can't record the output of the amp digitally into Ableton Live on my mac is really limiting it's use for me currently to practice only. I've reported issues i've run into with the bluetooth connection to the ios amplify app before on the forum. It always works correctly when using it as a bluetooth speaker for other apps, so it seems like an amplify app issue. For a player like myself, the amplify app could be much better thought out. It seems designed for a very different kind of player. I've posted various suggestions on Line 6 Ideas regarding how it could be improved for a player like myself. I say i use it for practice only. But the lack of an external effects send/return is kind of becoming an issue for me, because i like to use external looper pedals as a part of my guitar practice regime. Ideally, you'd like the looper to be after the guitar effects in the signal chain, so that you can record a loop, and then change the guitar effect sound you are using when you play back on top of the loop. Since you have to put the looper pedal in the signal chain before the raw guitar signal enters the amp, you can't really do this with amplifi. Both the loop and the guitar you are overdubbing on top of the loop are run through whatever effect preset you have loaded into the amp. Again, maybe at this point my attempted usage of the amp is way beyond what the designers intended it to be used for. So i guess my biggest beef with this amp is that the designers seemed to intentionally dumb it down in different ways. Which might be perfect for a certain kind of casual user. Who just wants to very casually play guitar along to an itunes track of some band they like. That kind of seems like the ideal user the designers focused on. i was initially attracted to it because i have used digital amp simulation and digital effect for years, including Line6 pods and Line6 modeling guitars. And was always very happy with those products in the past. Both for live gigs, and for use in the studio. So when a new 'revolutionary' amp was announced by Line6 with integrated Line6 amp simulation and effects and high quality stereo sound output, that sounded very exciting. And they also said it had a USB port, so i just assumed that actually worked and would provide a digital connection from the amp to a computer for recording purposes. So i ordered one as soon as it was announced, because my experience with Line6 products had been so stellar in the past. In hindsight, i should have waited for user reviews. Had i done that, i probably would not have purchased the amp. The sound of the amp and it's effects are totally acceptable to me, but other aspects of how it is to be used, the design of the ios app, the stability of the bluetooth connection, the lack of external effect sends, the lack of a working usb connection, all of these issues lead me personally to be kind of frustrated with it.

I'm wondering if just adding a 'factory' tag to some set of existing well designed and diverse set of tones could give the people who want to work their way through a set of high quality factory tone presets what they want. This would not modify anything in the existing app. Song search would totally work the same as it does now. But if you enter the appropriate keyword then you get a set of factory tone presets as the return that you can then work your way through. I think all it would take is someone who works at line6 adding the appropriate keyword to the appropriate set of pre-existing published tones. Song search now is already sensitive to whatever keywords are in the published tone info page. I tend to use artist name or musical genre as opposed to a specific song name, and that seems to work fine if the tone was tagged with that info. So by just adding the appropriate factory tag, everyone who wants a nice set of factory presets would actually get that and would stop complaining. Personally, i'd also like to see more musical genre specific keyword tags in the published tones. I'd also love to be able to use that keyword info that is in the presets when doing searches in My Tones. Right now it appears that searching in MyTones only works on the name of the tone, and not the tone's info keyword tags like song search does. If it also worked on the keyword info, then you could use specific keywords in your custom tones as a way to organize them for easy access.

Could someone provide some information about how you might want to work with this particular module in the Editor when putting together a custom tone preset. Why might you want to have it in different locations in the signal chain? And what kinds of situations might warrant different settings for Min position = 0 and Max Position = 100, which seems to be true for every preset i've investigated it's settings in.

Yes, i agree that getting the USB port working for recording the effected guitar sound into a computer DAW or back to the ios device controlling it is important. I'm going to feel a lot better about my purchase when the USB port starts working. For me personally, i'd want to record it in Ableton Live on a mac if i was recording back to a personal computer. The ipad is also a pretty interesting audio recording environment these days. So ideally i'd want something like AudioBus support so that i could work with AudioBus enabled ios software synths or ios DAW software on the ipad along with the guitar amp.

In response to marcoslupo's question, feel free to turn this post into an 'app wish list'. Obviously the hardware we already own is not going to change, we have to live with what's there. But the software that works with the hardware could be greatly expanded. In response to iiknowathingortwo's response, i wish you would not be always so quick to shut down people on the forums here when they make what you perceive as a negative comment. i'm making these comments because i think with some additional effort the product can be made much better for more serious players like myself. So i want to provide that feedback to Line 6 by posting about it in their forum. The amp has the capability to make some nice tones, so why artificially limit it usability for people. Especially since a lot of the limitations can be addressed in software. Why is it unreasonable for me to use Amplifi to play music with other people? In an improvised jam situation where i need to be able to access or modify different presets on the fly while playing in real time. We are talking about a guitar amplifier, right? I might be doing this in my living room. I might be doing this in a coffee house kind of casual performance situation. I might be playing with other people, or i might be doing something solo. I might be just playing guitar or nothing else, or i might be working with a software synthesizer on an ios or powerbook, or i might be using a looping pedal. When you actually do this, it quickly becomes apparent that there are some usability limitations that could be addressed with additional support in software. What i tried to do with this post is explore some suggestions for options that would make Amplifi much more usable in this kind of musical situation. Personally, i'm never going to play guitar along to a pre-recorded itunes track. Whether i'm playing with other people, or just practicing guitar by myself. So even if i'm just using the amp for guitar practice, which i think even you would agree is one of it's 'intended uses', when i'm practicing guitar i want to have access to a large range of tones i can grab and work with in real time. I need a way to organize those tones when i'm editing them. And i need a way to access them easily in real time. The existing product is lacking in both of these areas when you seriously get into using it, as i discussed above. Additional software features could improve this quit a bit. Allowing for easier organization and management of custom edited tone presets. Recording my playing is also an essential part of my guitar practice. And an essential part of any playing i do with other musicians. Amplifi has a usb port that currently does nothing. I will feel a lot better about my purchase when that feature actually starts working. I would expect the ability to record the effected guitar output back into my ipad, or into DAW software on a mac computer.

Amplifi could be a really cool product, but unfortunately it appears to be designed for karaoke guitar playing, end of story. And purposely dumbed down to fit into that product category. If that's the kind of player you are, then great. But if you really play music, then you are going to find it frustrating. I've put together some decent sounding custom tones for my playing styles, but accessing them while playing live is difficult to say the least unless you limit yourself to just putting 4 of them into the on amp favorites memories. It wouldn't have to be this way, the software could support midi control to swap in tone banks on the fly, and all kinds of other advanced live editing or modulation features, but it doesn't. Amplifi as a product was released before it was finished. No real documentation. The USB port currently does nothing. So currently no way to record from it digitally. There is a whole world of ios or desktop computer based recording software this amp could interface with. So then you could use it with digital recording software, or with ios synths with audio-bus support. But right now it's essentially useless for interfacing with that world. I hope that changes in the future. I thought 'Iknowathingortwo' comments above were very well written. A better alternative to Amplifi might be a pod and some other high fidelity powered speaker setup. I have found pods great to use in live playing or recording situations. Amplifi is not great in the first, and useless in the second right now. If Line6 actually finishes the product, then Amplifi might be very useful in both of these situations. But because of the way it's being marketed and the initial rollout, I don't have high hopes they are going to care about it in the right way to make that happen.

Ideally the usb port should allow you to stream the effected guitar sound out digitally. This makes way more sense than miking the amp in any recording situation. The speaker part of the amp is supposed to be clean non-coloring hi-fidelity stereo output. the tone coloring is coming from the amp modeling software and associated effects.

Ok. It would be great if we could save multiple sets of favorites. So then you could use favorites like banks of tones, each bank consisting of 4 tones in a favorites set. I do save tones to My Tones. To be honest, i haven't directly used anything returned from a song search. I might start with a song search return as a starting point, but i then always use the Editor to modify it. And then save the edited tone to My Tones. The issue is that you quickly build up a long list of custom tones in the My Tones page, and there aren't any ways to organize them other than by being clever about how you alphabetically name them. So i was hoping i could use sets of favorites as a way to organize tones into banks for different musical situations. And also as a way to quickly move sets of 4 tones into the 4 tone memories in the amp. Working with the My Tones list is kind of clunky when playing live. The list is too long to see everything in one page on the ipad, it's easy to click the wrong one when trying to do it while playing, or you click and it doesn't load, etc. In a jam situation i need to be able to access different presets on the fly depending on what is happening musically in the jam. So i was hoping i could build favorites banks to quickly swap sets of tones into the amp memories as an alternative to trying to work with the My Tones list when playing live. It's way easier to work with the physical tone button on the amp when playing then to try and work with the My Tone list on an ipad. But you have the limitation of only 4 tones there, which is a big limitation. So swapping in banks seemed like a way to have more flexibility. Of course it would also be great if you could map those favorites set banks using midi to make the switch into the amp. Then i could tie them to a midi footswitch or keys on a midi keyboard. It would also be sweet if you could map the editor controls to midi controllers. Then i could use the knobs on my midi controller to edit tones live when playing. If there were visual alternatives for working with your custom tones other than the existing My Tones list, that could also be a viable alternative for accessing tones while playing live. You basically need bigger things to press when working that way on a tablet. And the ability to organize raw material from the long master My Tones list. Midi mapping could be another alternative. If i could assign midi note on presses to individual tones in the My Tones list, that would also work. But ideally having a master tone list, and then the ability to work with banks of tones in some alternative bank list is probably better. With the midi mapping being in the secondary bank list rather than the master tone list. That way you can have a really big set of custom tones in My Tones, and then organize them into manageable sets of tones for different musical situations.

Since there isn't a manual for the app that i have found yet, i'm asking this question here. Is there a way to save different sets of favorites in the app? If so, how does one go about doing that? Or is that part of the app only limited to saving the current tone into one of the 4 hardware favorites memories in the amp? Ideally, i'd like to build up a collection of different banks of favorites, and be able to swap them in and out of the amp.

When the app-amp connection problem happens for me, the only thing that fixes it is completely powering off my ipad and then restarting it. Just quitting out of the app doesn't fix it.

Since there is no manual, could you explain how you got the editor to change a stomp effect to a delay?

It would be great if AudioBus support was added to the amplifi ios app. This would allow the ability to play along with ios synths or ios recording apps streaming to the amp while having the ability to also make tone changes on the amp. Right now i can play along to an ios synth, but i can't do tone changes. The way to think about this is that rather than playing along to a song playing back in the amplifi app, you could play along to a live audio stream coming from another running ios music app that is AudioBus compatible (most are). You can do this now if you just run the other ios app, but then you have no ability to do tone changes, which you need to be in the amplify app to do. I think this would be a fairly trivial programing addition to add to the amplifi app since it already had the ability to stream audio and tone changes, and would greatly improve it's utility for more serious musicians using ios. When the usb port works, if you could stream in audio from the amp into AudioBus to an audiobus compatible recording app, that would be even better.

There is definitely still a bluetooth issue associated with the connection between the amp and the app (i'm using the latest firmware). It's a separate issue from bluetooth connectivity to the ipad itself, which seems fine. I often end up in situations where the amp is bluetooth connected to my ipad, but the app says it isn't connected to the amp. Switch over to waldorf nave ios synth and that plays out of the amp fine when this happens. Switch back to the amplify app and it says it isn't connected. Maybe turning the amp off and on, or turning bluetooth off and then on again in setting panel will work, but not always. So far the only reliable way to get a connection between the amp and the app when this happens is to fully power down the ipad. Then when you start it again, the app connects and works. Note that when you normally turn off an ios device it doesn't fully power down. This is very frustrating, especially when you don't know about the full power down approach to solving it when it occurs.

Let me start off by saying i own other line 6 products, including modeling guitar and pod effects units. I was a happy customer of those products. I have used them recording many cds in the past. i have used them playing many gigs in the past. they worked reliably for these real world playing situations. I purchased the 75 watt Amplifi. In theory it sounds like a great product. The reality is very different. The connection between the ios app and the amp does not work reliably. This has nothing to do with the bluetooth connection between the ipad and the amp, which works fine. The app will lose connection with the amp, even though the actual bluetooth connection is there between the devices. You can switch to an ios synthesizer app, and it comes out of the amp fine via bluetooth when this happens. switch back to the amplifi app, and it says no amp is connected. This problem seems to happen randomly when using the app. The only way i've been able to use the product reliably in an actual playing situation is to only use the 4 tone presets available on the amp itself. which is extremely limiting because then there are only 4 tone memories available. My other issues. The app only allows for searching for pre-built tones via song title? Every other multi-effects unit on the planet has an extensive set of pre-built high quality factory presets available for easy browsing and audition. There is nothing like this available in the app for amplifi. The marketing for this product also implies that it is able to do some kind of tone matching like a kemper profiling amp. when in reality, it appears that the tone match is just someone manually associating a song title with a tone preset, end of story. Why can't i load a set of tones into banks in an ios app, and then use a midi footswitch controller to do program changes on the fly when playing? I can do this with other ios guitar effect software? It is easy to accidentally log out of the cloud when using the app. When you are in setup the logout button looks like the way out of the setup dialog. of course the whole reason why i was in setup is because the app was not sending my selected tones over to the amp, and i was trying to figure out why. all of this was occurring when i was in the middle of a jam session with someone. so there is the reality of using this product in a real playing situation. you can't change tones reliably while playing, and then it's easy to accidentally shut down any ability to even access tones by pressing the large logout button. Where is the user manual for the amplifi app? nothing available. And the manual for the amp is only 4 pages long pilots guide? there is a usb port that does nothing??? was the product released before it was finished? seems like it. This product could be really great. But the reality of it for me is that it is not. It doesn't work reliably for starters. and it is extremely self limiting, like it was only designed for someone to play along at home to a song on their iphone music library, end of story. and the product marketing is very misleading to boot. it's sad, because it's taking someone like me who was a happy line-6 customer (and booster of line-6 products to the world) and turning them into a line-6 hater.

I'm having a similar problem. The app is not connecting to the amp sometimes. But the amp is bluetooth connected to the ipad fine when this happens. If you switch over to the Waldorf Nave ios app, it plays back on the amp fine via bluetooth. switch back to the amplifi app, the amp isn't showing up