I am professional musician and do at least 3 gigs a week, my setup is Variax JTV 69/pod HD500 / PA (direct) After two years using this setup, my conclusion is that there really is a big difference between running the pod usb and run straight into a PA, it is much easier to get good sound running via usb, run straight in PA is much more difficult, depends on many variables, and to this day I suffer to get a good tone direct sound in PA, mainly in the drives. Now via usb is very easy to get good tones
I would like to know the opinion of your friends about it