POD GO - exact same tone as Helix?

[andredainez]

Hello!!

 

I just purchased an Line 6 POD GO and fell in love with it! The Pod Go is really awesome. I play in a prog metal band and can't see myself taking my amps to a gig anymore! haha

 

I got a really unuseful and geeky question (but we guitarrists love to geek out, don't we? hahahahaha)

 

Today I took the Pod Go to a friends house. He have the Helix Native software and we compared the two.

 

They sounded pretty similar, but then we performed the the phase invert test: recorded the processed and dry tone through the POD, then processed the dry track with the exact same settings in Helix Native. There was some frequencies (hi end, specially) that didn't got cancelled (when the sound is exactly the same, theoretically there would be no sound).

 

So my question is: is this a difference because the Native is inside the PC and the actual unit have some tonal differences or there are any difference in the tone of the POD GO compared to the Helix (like loss of high end, due to different processing etc.)?

 

I am really glad to be here in the forum with you guys! 

 

Best Regards!

[phil_m]

The short answer is yes, they’re the same, but there are a few caveats. There are some differences in that there are stereo and mono versions of almost every block in Helix (Native), but in POD Go, all blocks are either mono or stereo. So it could be possible there’s differences in that.

 

Did you make sure that all parameters in every block were exactly the same?

 

There is some amount of model optimization in the POD Go compared to the Helix models as well. It’s hard to say without knowing some more details about what sort of differences you were hearing.

[andredainez]

Thanks for the answer! It makes sense!

 

Yes, the settings where exactly the same. Maybe this could be some colouring in the DAW processing (processing the full processed sound and DI going through the Native)?

 

But in the end of the day, they are the same, so! I wondered if it was any difference in the resolution or headroom in the models, too.

 

All and all, the Pod sound absolutely amazing!

[andredainez]

Just to let you guys know: we redid the test and, this time, tested the hypothesis that difference in tone was due to different latency from the DI being processed by the Helix Native and the processed tone. We phase aligned the processed tracks and when inverted the phase, there was just background noise (as if I did the same on two tracks processed by Helix Native). Therefore the tone was identical! :)