ivanh3 Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 I own a Pod HD Pro X and a Pod HD 500. The Pro X is my main setup, I run direct to the PA and use 1 or 2 Tech 21 Power Engine 60s for stage monitors. I use my HD 500 for practice and as a backup. I recently noticed that my HD 500 was really sounding like garbage in practice: volume was lower, there was more noise, gain, and compression (I don't use compression). The sound was thinner. Yet my Pro X sounds great. I was thinking that they should almost identical because I backed up the patches from the Pro X and using the cut and paste method along with the HD Edit software, transferred the patches to the HD 500. Well after about a week of wondering WTF, I pooled all the gear together and did some troubleshooting: I checked the Pro X in both Power Engines to make sure one those hadn't crapped out. With the Power Engines dialed up the same, they sounded the same so no issue with the amps. I then setup both Pods to a Power Engine each and the difference was night and day. Again the HD500 was thin, compressed, fizzy and noisy, and the Pro X was full sounding with no issues. I looked at each patch parameter and they were all the same. I then rebuilt a patch on the HD 500 and it sounded great. I have no idea what could have changed unless there is something in the transferred Pro X patch that doesn't work with the Pod HD. I know there is a transfer program but it does not support the Pro X yet. Any thoughts? I hate the idea of having to rebuild all my patches, and then doing that again for each time I tweak my Pro X patches. I was liking the notion of having the HD 500 as a back up and my practice rig. Ivan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MartinDorr Posted February 13, 2014 Share Posted February 13, 2014 Sounds like the Pro X (or any X) adds something to the patch when compared to a regular HD patch. The regular HDs load it but when using it they sound bad. The other way round apears to work though, i.e., when an X loads a regular HD patch. The X may fill gaps with defaults when it finds the 'fill' values of previously unused fields present in the HD patches. Obviously this is all guessing, but I have seen this before in SW products where backward compatibility is preserved (the old data sets work in the new product) but the other way round does not (because the old product simply does not do the right thing with the new data). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ivanh3 Posted February 13, 2014 Author Share Posted February 13, 2014 I did go back and look and a little harder. I did find one parameter that was off and that was the "master" setting under the amp parameters (with sag, bias, etc). It was pegged at 100 on the HD 500 and on 50 on the the Pro X. Moving it back to 50 did get rid of some of the fizz, but overall the volume of the patch was still more compressed and the volume lower on the HD 500 (which it was even with the "master" setting at 100). The physical master volume knob on the Pro X is at about 10 o'clock and the HD 500 is at 12 o'clock to get similar volumes, but then it turns up the hiss. Right now my work around is to switch to the adjacent amp model and then back and that at least keeps all my effects and their settings and chain location correct, but then I have to go through and adjust my EQ and mixer settings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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