Figured it out, HD500ProX as soundcard with digital re-amping, and dry recording with hardware monitoring.

[castlevania]

Hi guys,

I am probably late to the show, but I just bought a POD HD Pro 500x. I was disappointed to see there was no way to re-amp via usb. I watched a video on how to turn off the hardware monitor and loop one of the outputs in to the input and to arm a track for recording.

 

Well it turns out this technique works just as well with s/pdif. I had an s/pdif cable laying around, so I turned off the hardware monitor in the asio control panel. Then I plugged the HD 500 Pro X s/pif output to the input. I soloed the dry track in my daw i wanted to reamp, and armed another track to record, and it worked perfect. No unnecessary D/A then A/D conversion. MAKE SURE that the track your recording on isn't outputting to your main bus in the DAW or you'll get a NASTY feedback loop. If you want to listen back to the track, UNPLUG the s/pdif cable BEFORE routing your new track back to your daws main bus.

 

Another thing I've figured out for recording dry tracks which lets me USE the hardware monitor WITHOUT hearing the dry signal. I have my mixer driving my studio monitors and headphones, with my POD HD 500 Pro X as the souncard for my computer. I have my pod patch set up with amp/wet on left and dry on right. I have the unbalanced audio outs from the POD HD going to my mixer into a stereo input. Then I also have the balanced outputs going to 2 individual mixer tracks both panned centered (even though im only using the left channel so the pod doesn't sum the wet/dry signals.

 

When recording i turn off the stereo pair that i use for playback, and only arm the left/mono balanced channel on my mixer, which allows me to hear the wet signal from the hardware monitor in both ears. This also means I hear the daw playback from the computer in mono, but only while recording. As soon as im done recording, i turn off the left/mono balanced channel, and  turn on the unbalanced stereo channel. Then I can listen back in stereo again.

 

This can be done too with just 1 pair of outputs to individual mixer inputs, with the mixer inputs panned left and right respectively. However when recording you have to turn off the right mixer input, and center the left mixer input. For me its easier to have 2 separate sets.

 

This does mean however that you will only hear the left audio out from your daw (but centered in your monitors) while recording, but you can probably put a plugin on your daws output to sum the channels to mono and activate it when you record, and deactivate it when your done recording. This way if you need to hear tracks from the daws right channel you can, but I don't do this though, because I know i'll forget to deactivate it.