lou-kash

The Stomp can be very picky about USB cables. From the dozens of cables that I have accumulated over the past 20+ years, only about two or three are reliably stable and long enough to be useful with the Stomp on the floor. This is not necessarily surprising though, as there are lots of poor quality USB cables on the market which would still work just OK with "lightweight" gear like scanners or printers. Recently I bought a couple of USB-C to USB-B cables, 4 m (!) long, which work fine. See here for more details:

Many things are possible. I've been already using the Stomp as a 4-channel mixer with two mics and two guitars. Which is admittedly tricky to set up but it works. :) … and then move the Return block to path B. Make sure to adjust the Split "miniblock" in front so that Main In goes only to path A. Then you have separate paths for each keyboard. You can then either mix them again at any point in the chain so that they both go to Main Out, or move the B output to Send.

That might have been a "Black Friday" sale. 3 years ago I made use of it as well, getting an additional 30% discount on the already discounted price with a hardware product.

A compressor at the end will massively reduce the signal to noise ratio, i.e. increase noise. For guitars, compressors are best placed at the very beginning of the chain, with the exception of effects that rely on dynamic input like autowah and may work best when placed first.

Strike that ^ As of v3.70, I switched to the new "US Dripman" aka Fender Bassman Silverface, and have no plans to look back anytime soon. Sounds great in headphones with a dual cab, mixing 4x10 Tweed with 2x15 US Dripman, i.e. both Fender Bassman based. Sounds great both with the fretless J-bass as well as with the fretted Ibanez SR1200, although I use a separate preset for each. Sounds great without the cabs, going straight into the power amp of my 15" Quantum 415 combo. Haven't had the opportunity yet to plug the Dripman straight into a "live" PA. (note to my booking agents: get me more gigs!)

Since you're already asking… Yes! Because I have bought the Stomp so that I don't need anything else in the first place. ;) Not even an amp. But that's just me…

Tha last millenium has called and wants its "good example" back! The last time I have actively used a floppy disk was in 1999 with a Macintosh LC475, before buying an iMac G3. Sadly, Apple is not exactly the "best example" either, anymore. There was a time when they had a good balance between excessive skeuomorphism of the early OS X and the dull flatness and ambiguousity of today's MacOS/iOS. UI design is an art discipline on its own. In my opinion, the HX Edit app UI isn't all that bad visually. It's just that it isn't very Mac-like which is often the case with cross-platform apps.

This forum software is capable of many things. But it requires an admin that would enable all the features. And perhaps promote a bunch of trustworthy longtime members to moderators.

By default, the installer creates a "Line6" folder in /Applications. (It's e.g. not smart enough to know that I want all such apps in my own /Applications/Hardware subfolder and it doesn't look there for an existing instance to overwrite. That's not always necessarily a bad thing though.) But the app itself can then live almost anywhere, as long as the user has admin privileges to move it. If not, then an alias is being made because by default the app is owned by the "root" user. But if the user holds the option key, a copy is being made, and thus the user may end up with multiple copies – and thus multiple versions. So to move an app owned by root, one needs to hold the command key and allow it by entering the admin password – or the finger print.

For the record, Native 3.70 still installs and launches on El Capitan, although officially unsupported. Tested with Logic 10.3.3

Since this thread is about unstable USB connections and has some useful info about USB cables in general, I thought I'd bump it with a new observation: Having upgraded my Mac collection with the new 15" MacBook Air, I also had to get quite a load of new USB-C cables, adapters, you name it. After testing a few, I decided to explore the boundaries by ordering a 4 m (!) long Delock USB 2.0 B-to-C, i.e. compatible with a whole bunch of USB devices starting with antiquities like an Epson Perfection 1240 scanner, M-Audio Oxygen8 (v1) keyboard, etc. etc. up to my new Roland Octa-Capture, and of course… drum roll, HX Stomp. It works! 4 m long! Amazing. I've been using it since a few weeks without any issues. In Switzerland, it's available for as low as CHF 13 ≈ EUR 15.

Aaand, fun fact: So HX Edit 3.70 actually launches on Mountain Lion, but it doesn't open any window. Obviously there are some required frameworks missing. At least my HX Stomp is still being recognized as a USB Audio device with the default 48 kHz sampling rate.

On the good news side: HX Edit and Native 3.70 still run on El Capitan. You may need to update HX Edit (and possibly also the firmware) manually, as it isn't aware of updates anymore. That's been the case with 3.60 already, as far as I recall.

Alright, just tested but this trick doesn't work with Central.

github.com/andrews05/ResForge You're in luck, it's still Catalina compatible! :D I also have this German book: zvab.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=9783908489948 But for editing an Info.plist all you need is TextEdit.

Speaking of which, sometimes you can fool an app to launch on older OS simply by editing the "LSMinimumSystemVersion" attribute in *.app/Contents/Info.plist. As long as there aren't any system libraries and framework dependencies, they may still run normally. Been there done that, e.g. with several versions of Firefox a few years ago.

Having bought a new MBA 15" earlier this year, I'm on the "cutting edge" at this moment, hehe. But the new app is nothing essential yet. Likely it might be eventually convenient when certain next updates arrive, considering how annoyingly buried some of the actual dowloads on line6.com/software are. But as of now, I haven't seen anything that couldn't be accomplished via HX Edit, apart from seeing a large colorful thumbnail of my Stomp. I have joined the logicprohelp.com/forums recently. (I'm a Logic user since 2001.) They are full of stories like this, e.g. retired musicians still happily working with their antique Mac Pros running OS 10.7 and Logic 8 or 9. And on the other hand folks hastily upgrading to Sonoma 14.0.x (aka the real public beta) amidst a recording/mixing project and wondering why all of the sudden they cannot meet their deadlines that were "yesterday".

Haven't checked HX Edit v3.70 yet, but HX Edit 3.62 as well as Native 3.60 still work on El Capitan although the release notes say Sierra. In fact, even HX Edit 3.70 still says in its Info.plist "LSMinimumSystemVersion: 10.8". That's Mountain Lion! (Having a bootable 10.8 partition, I should check that out :D) "Central" being a completely new app, I'm not surprised they are dropping support for "old" MacOS. Although cutting off Catalina is rather steep. Musicians tend to be conservative with upgrades. Heck, I know a professional recording studio in my neighborhood who still run their ProTools on a Mac Pro with Mountain Lion because it just works.

Weeeell, I'd beg to differ…! Compared to my old MBP mid-2012, the speakers in my new MBA M2 15" sound amazing! Not to speak when comparing them to my MBP 2008 or even the PBG4 2005, hehe. But… I haven't tried to play my bass guitar through them yet, so… err… what do I know, right…? :D

You can. You need an app that supports audio playthrough aka software monitoring, e.g. GarageBand for a start. Expect latency. In other words, you can but you might not want to, see @silverhead's reply above.

Meanwhile, I've noticed it as well, of course. But as already noted, it's not a critical issue the way I use the Stomp.

I'd go with G Cougar 800 = Gallien-Krueger amp block which to me has this "clean-ish" and sterile 80s aura (that I so despise, hehe). For 60s sound, I'd take Ampeg B-15NF. For gritty 70s funk, I'd try Woody Blue (Acoustic 360) or Del Sol 300 (Sunn Coliseum 300), or any Ampeg model.

Definitely. Me too, most of the time, albeit fretless. (Otherwise also a fretted Ibanez SR1200, but meanwhile only for one pop rock band that I play with.) I'm simply using the classic Ampeg SVT-4 PRO model because it has an additional band EQ built in which allows for "surgical" fine tuning without having to use up more blocks. For direct PA or headphones output I have a separate Dual Cab block with 4×10" and 15" which can be ballanced to fine tune the sound even more. For stage monitoring I only use the power amp input (aka Effect Return) of my bass combo and thus bypassing the combo preamp altogether, going from the Stomp's Send Out via path split before the Cab block. Also, I have the Ampeg Opto Comp right before the amp, and an optional Parametric EQ at the end of the Send path in case I'd have to quickly adjust my monitor EQ'ing depending on the stage acoustics. Other than that, I also use an Autowah and Chorus block every now and then. I still have two blocks free for other use if needed. Initially I was even using the same preset for both basses, but meanwhile I have split them, with small changes to the amp EQ because – naturally – both basses don't have the same sound "out of the box". But apart from the logical difference in playing techniques and intonation, I actually wanted to make both basses sound basically similar, with a slapping EQ option for the Ibanez. (I'm bad at slapping though, and I only do it "against my will" because a few covers of that pop rock band require it… :D) So… the Stomp as a bass amp modeler works fine for me. :) (Edit:) See also my earlier more detailed post here:

I've been already using the Stomp as a 4-channel (!) mixer with two mics and two guitars. It works, although my particular setup ultimately files under "You-Must-Know-And-Understand-What-You-Are-Doing Advanced Mode"… So… Just experiment. There's not really that much that you could break by that. :)

Hm… I, for one, would postulate that disconnecting the cables from the Stomp is about as simple it can get… :D Or turning off the (presumably active) speakers.