Good to see the king return.
Hope all is well, it’s great to see you back!
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Yes, their wet effects are definitely nothing to write home about. That said, you can dial in usable tones lightning fast using their amp sims when compared to the Dwarf. Also, I hope the irony of using “open-source” as a pejorative in the context of a MOD devices forum is not lost on you. Especially with the added limitation of the LV2 format.
The quality of the plugin depends on the dev of course, and Dwarf has some great plugins on board. That said, I could also point out a good number of the Dwarf plugins that your phrase “a bunch of open-source effects poorly copied and crammed into their hardware” would perfectly describe. Especially in the categories most important to guitar players: amps and overdrives.
I will remain hopeful. Thanks to those who replied, and it’s not that I want it to be like my Quad Cortex(I use that live and its fine) I want it to be different in a way. A couple good cleans and a couple killer mid high gain amps with an actual visual guide as to what goes where.
The $400 dollars is not the issue it’s trying to make it back if I do not like it.
I had a Poly Digit/Beebo and that is absolutely not for guitar but looked like a pedal, constantly I fed wires into each other trying to try to create patches and blew a speaker and my ear out. That was $400 and unknown at that time and it sat on Reverb forever.
What I want is a guitar tinkering gizmo that has graphical and pictorial* display on my Mac to gain insight into routing and use with my tube amps and powered speakers/cabs. I know nothing of open sourcing or Lv2 so I will I guess have a steeeeep learning curve. I assumed you could turn it on and play straight away, all in the journey I guess.
Have a great day/night.
thanks
*I used a big word so I had to look it up! I was right .
pictorial
adjective
a pictorial history of Gateshead: illustrated, with illustrations, with pictures, with drawings, with sketches; in pictures, in picture form, in photographs, photographic, graphic; representational, depictive, illustrative, drawn.
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This is also what I wanted, and I believe that’s what I got. The routing flexibility is quite good.
Nor should you need to know anything about open source and LV2. You’ll only need to know about those things if you want to take part in expanding the available offering of plugins yourself (or if you’re just curious).
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That’s exactly what it is.
Turn on, add effects, route them with cables and rock on.
LV2 is the format of the plugin used by MODs. You need to know nothing of it (like myself). Only if you are a software developer creating plugins, then you could learn about that and create plugins for yourself.
Mod also has the option for MAX users to create a patch using gen~ end export it to the Mod. That is very cool and what I intend to do.
But before all that, plug your unit in, choose effects, route them as you wish, and have fun. You can start with the existing pedalboards and/or import others from here. Maybe there’s already something to your liking created by someone else.
Enjoy and, if you can, post your opinions – good or bad – and questions.
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It is not. Open source is no pejorative, but just copying the code of others and packaging as your own product is.
And LV2 is a format. Where in the bloody hell is there a limitation for the LV2 format? MODs option of hosting LV2 plugins only is one thing. Nothing prevents anyone form coding a mammoth plugin and porting it over to LV2. It’s just that many companies don’t. And they’re not happy that, for ProTools compatibility alone, they need to port their plugins to 3 (yes, three!) different formats.
Also, a free plugin does not have to be open source. It is free as in “devoid of monetary price”. Open source is free as in “freedom” – anyone can look inside and see how it works. Depending on the license under which it is published, you have to make your sub-product (using open source libraries) also open source, but some licenses do not require that. You’d be surprised at how many things you use and pay for that are based on open source software. (Start with your Android phone, if you have one)
For those interested:
Which I believe to be the reason why your Dwarf lived in your house far less than you have adorned this forum with your thoughts about it.
The only experience I have with “coding” guitar effects was with the Jesusonic, back in 2005 or so. You’d be surprised that with 10 lines of code you can get a distortion. But it probably takes 2000 to get a good distortion.
Do you believe every one of the 1000s of effects some products offer have each 2000 lines of code?
Read Sound on Sound’s evaluation of the Boss GT1000, and you’ll see that, while they praise the amp models and “realistic” experience, they also say amp emulations are few and not very tweakable. And that is a product from a major company in the business, with 70M in annual sales.
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that is exactly what I’m doing and besides some minor issues its really working great. Don’t get me wrong: there are great tones with minimum effort you can dial in - especially with cleans and low gain. Not to promote myself but just have a look at my pedalboard.
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Exactly my own take.
I needed a clean setup for neck pickup in a semi-hollow. Brought the Supersonic, a cabsim and the Shiroverb and – voilà!! It was the first time I could recreate the Guitar Amp Pro setup I used with Logic Pro 7 years ago. It sounded immensely better to my ear than Amplitube and Guitar Rig together!!
If I may be pictorial about it: 
Great video, @spunktsch!
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Good that you pumped up this posting.
Very economical but with a good blues sond.
Thanks for it.
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First of all thanks for the nice perspective. And I want to assure you that we are here - MOD team and community - to help you with any tips or barriers you may found.
Indeed, admittedly it’s not the easiest device/platform to turn on and have hours of fun without any previous setup. We have been putting a lot of thought and work into it for the last couple of weeks so we can improve this onboarding process.
Personally, I would say that is great for tinkering and getting creative with your sound (meaning, going a bit out of the clichê guitar sound).
I hope you have fun 
This is not self promotion. It’s actually a really great example and a really nice starting point @guitarsandvideogames.
@spunktsch has here a great pedalboard making use of a lot of the “special things” available on the MOD platform and to add on top is a super well documented and explained pedalboard!
@guitarsandvideogames
At this stage you should be excited!
I know I was and I still am.
You might be missing the opportunities here.
If you are willing to invest that bit of time to learn how it works, how you keep track of gain levels and how to work the dials to make it work for you, you’ll come to some good primers for yourself to build upon. Once I had found my favourite free online IR’s for cabinets for example, things started to come together. If you feel like experimenting, There aren’t much worthy competitors though. If you’re looking for a real multitool and not just a multi-effect, you won’t regret it!
I hope a story like mine puts in some weight on the positive side: I’m selling my Wampler pedals and my Strymon Flint because they became idle since I have the dwarf. I downsized my rig significantly. I’m now experimenting with vocals and acoustic guitar, I’ll be buying a midi keyboard because it has proven itself als a wicked midi machine as well.
In my Dwarf journal you can follow my journey and how I discovered, in baby steps, to use it both in front of an amp and as end-to-end system. How it servers my heavy metal and acoustic needs, How easy it is to line up files and create a backing track machine for rehearsals without drummer. How I record both dry and wet signals of my ideas. that way, you can keep both and re-amp. I record ideas or the band and @brummer already showed interest to work on a mutitrack recorder. (he already has a recorder plugin that you can link anywhere in your chain.
If you are absolutely NOT creative, there is always this excellent community that will be eager to help.
Run into a bug? post it on this board! Last time I posted something, it was fixed in a next release.
MOD might not be the big multinational but they listen to their community.
I came in here as a singing guitarist and learned a lot while I already contributed from day 1 myself.
Try the online MOD sandbox.
https://sandbox.moddevices.com/
you can use the file player to play a dry DI guitar signal, preloaded in there.
build a chain, hear in real time how it works.
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Thank you so much for the nice words @LievenDV.
Certainly, the platform and the devices are not perfect and a lot can be improved.
You already pointed out many of those points in an educated, friendly and constructive way. We can’t be anything but thankful for that.
After all, no one and no device, platform, ecosystem, or anything are perfect.
That said - and taking this great opportunity 
- this link is not the current one (I’m not even sure if it works). @guitarsandvideogames use try.moddevices.com
I’m sorry @LievenDV, I really needed to do this 
Thank you so much for the great supporter that you are 
EDIT: It actually does work (go ahead and troll me as well, I deserve it ), although I guess it shouldn’t. The “official” one is try.moddevices.com
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Ok Team , its here and plugged in, I am going to default it and start from scratch. Previous User was a Kicker starter Mod user #66 so good on him.
STAND BY
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Can’t you see I’m gradually working towards becomes local respresentative or something?
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I wholeheartedly recommend @LievenDV’s journal to anyone trying to get acquaited with MOD products. It’s thorough and realistic (in the sense that it shows pros and cons with equal fairness).
Ditto.
We all here have some needs and may still rely in outboard gear for a number of tasks. But as Mod evolves, we may replace some of it if we get the results we need. For instance, if my upcoming tests with the SF2 player work out fine, goodbye to my Boss GP10. (And it looks like Sfizz may come to Mod.)
No, you da man! BTW, where’s Elk’s music? Get to work, man!!
The Poly units and Empress Zoia are also loved and hated in equal measures. Great and powerful machines, but it takes a while to get something useful from them. I prefer MOD over both because of the interface. Programming the Zoia is a nightmare.
Now the Quad Cortex is certainly a beast, in spite of the heavy criticism it’s facing.
We’re eagerly waiting, hoping that the Army of Doom did not kill your hope for a brighter day.
Very few times in my life I plugged a piece of gear and said WOW right away. I can remember this happened with the Victoria 20112 amp, which is actually a Fender Tweed – the loved 5e3 circuit that is freely available for anyone to build (the patent lapsed). Also the TC Electronic Nova. And the Yamaha Magicstomp, of course. Love at first chord.
So if the MOD in your first audition doesn’t sound like heaven, don’t let the eerie clouds surrounding the sinister bearer of dreadful news engulf you. Keep your head up and trust your own judgment. I did get a nice result (the one I posted above) within a relatively short time frame, but it was not immediate. My first amp and cab combo did not please me at all.
Shiroverb, on the other hand, was the MagicStomp of MOD. Just delicious!
You have my vote! 
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Day 1 was bad
Day 2 was angry
Day 3 Posted for sale.
You are created a device that is in no may to have Headphones plugged in. my ears are completed FKD and I just went from one pedalbaord to the next , The headphone volume in menus does absolutley nothing to protect the user. If some guys pins outputs and uploads and doesnt warn anyone the outcome is me shivering to my 10 yearold that I think my ear is bleeding.
Thanks for the effort but not for me. What a nightmare of connectivity.
You have the posibility to change the volume of the headphones independently, if you haven’t checked that. Maybe you have it too loud?
Eh, what? LV2 is not “for Linux-based systems”, it works on windows, macos, freebsd, haiku, etc. and it certainly is an opensource plugin format.
Compared to other formats like AAX and AU which are by definition closed formats, LV2 is liberally licensed and can be extended by anyone (which is how MOD was able to extend it with their own custom GUI, something that is not possible with other plugin formats).
Please don’t spread misinformation like this.
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Thanks for correcting my post, @dreamer.
I should have said “ALSO for Linux-based systems” or not mentioned OS at all.
My point is that LV2 was a format, not an “inherent limitation” of any kind, which I believe the rest of my post tries to describe in more detail.
The other portion of the phrase – which I agree was badly written – refers to the fact that a LV2 plugin in itself does not need to be made either free or open source, even if based in an open source format. I have rewritten it as well.
And whereas OSX and Windows (as well as the others you mention) can run LV2 plugins, support is still scarce for OSX for instance – it was added to Reaper just last year and is still limited.
I believe I said something previously in the post regarding my zero knowledge of programming plugins. It would have told you that I am possibly not the best person to explain their formats. I accept and thank you for your corrections.
However, phrasing it as
is extremely rude. I don’t think I’m known as a spreader of misinformation in this forum. I am a librarian, I know what misinformation is and what it does. The help of knowleadgeble people like you is welcome, but stepping on others hardly ever does any good.
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