Collection of improvement suggestions / feature requests

Contribute Feature Requests
#1

I’ve been playing with the MOD Duo for some weeks now… as a quite experienced semiprofessional guitarist (Rock & Metal) I know the needs of many people playing live on stage, in the studio or rehearsal room.
My audio-programming skills could be better :wink: and I’m not able to support this part, but from the perspective of a “professional user” I can share my collected suggestions and feature requests to achieve better usability and reliable gear for “every day use”:

  • save configuration of input / output levels
  • import / export pedalboards (import with automatic install of missing plugins and/or warning)
  • mute audio until boot is completely finished to avoid crackling sound
  • show percentage (bar graph) of boot process in display
  • optional show cpu load / memory usage in display (small in a corner)
  • optional show warning (just for a short time) in display when too many dropouts per second occur
  • show tuner in display, would be perfect to activate it by holding footswitch for 3 seconds, optional mute audio when tuner is active, option to set pitch and transpose (± 6 semitones)
  • convolver plugin for speaker simulation with option to upload impulse responses (eg. redwirez)
  • optimize gui of the parametric equalizer, change order of the control, group [frequency/gain/q] settings like this: [f1/g1/q1],[f2/g2/q2],…
  • include high- and low-pass in parametric equalizer
  • option to switch multiple plugins with one footswitch (and/or MIDI command) at the same time
    example: activate/deactivate 4 plugins with one step, eg. wah, distortion, delay and gain/volumeboost to switch between rhythm- and solo sound
  • option to assign multiple MIDI commands (and/or footswitch) to one plugin
    example: use the same gain/volumeboost plugin for slight rhythm boost and for solo sound (no need to use the same plugin several times, saves cpu load and avoids confusing pedalboard setups)
  • allow “hot plugging” of (USB) MIDI controllers with automatic re-setting the pedalboard’s MIDI assignments (this might be useful if the MIDI controller wasn’t connected while loading the pedalboard)
  • for swiching between pedalboards: smooth fading (about 100 ms) between the both pedalboard’s sounds, no silence or “hard” changes

At last a big thank you to the MOD Duo team and all people working on this project.
You did some really great work so far! :+1:

6 Likes
#2

Your first bullet point is over here: https://github.com/moddevices/mod-duo-issues/issues/27
And I agree that it’s an important one — it’s definitely a pain to have to reset that on every boot.

#3

Hello 120dBRockNRoll, thanks for the suggestions and feature requests! I’ll try to address as much of them as I can :slight_smile:

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]

  • save configuration of input / output levels[/quote]This is being worked on.

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]- import / export pedalboards (import with automatic install of missing plugins and/or warning)[/quote]Ditto. It is already possible on a lower level (using SCP and then either copying off or on the .pedalboards directory).

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]- mute audio until boot is completely finished to avoid crackling sound[/quote]There’s a relay that activates the sound circuit after the device has been initialized that should prevent any clicks and pops from happening. The crackling is probably due to buffer issues that are being worked on.

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]- optional show warning (just for a short time) in display when too many dropouts per second occur[/quote]In the future these dropouts shouldn’t happen anymore, only when you drive the CPU to the max. And that should only happen when you’re working on new pedalboards or extend existing ones, it shouldn’t happen on stage. Unless you’ve chosen to go on stage with pedalboards of which you know they demand a lot of the MOD Duo.

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]- show tuner in display, would be perfect to activate it by holding footswitch for 3 seconds, optional mute audio when tuner is active, option to set pitch and transpose (± 6 semitones)[/quote]Tuner is being worked on, not sure about the extra options, others will have to chime in to comment on that.

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]- convolver plugin for speaker simulation with option to upload impulse responses (eg. redwirez)[/quote]This is already possible on our test setups so it’s being worked on too.

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]- optimize gui of the parametric equalizer, change order of the control, group [frequency/gain/q] settings like this: [f1/g1/q1],[f2/g2/q2],…

  • include high- and low-pass in parametric equalizer[/quote]This is up to the plugin developer, MOD develops some plugins but I don’t think the parametric EQ is one of them, which one are you referring to?

[quote=“120dBRockNRoll”]- option to switch multiple plugins with one footswitch (and/or MIDI command) at the same time
example: activate/deactivate 4 plugins with one step, eg. wah, distortion, delay and gain/volumeboost to switch between rhythm- and solo sound[/quote]This is already partly possible with the MOD Switchbox, Toggleswitch and Switchtrigger plugins which allow you to create up to four separate chains with FX and switch between them. The drawback of such a solution is of course that you might have to add some FX twice and that this could lead to complex pedalboards. I agree it would be nice to have a plugin that mimics a programmable loop switcher.

Jeremy
MOD team

2 Likes
#4

Regarding “import / export pedalboards” is goot to remember that MOD is also a social network.

Not only you will be able to export and import pedalboards but also to easily share your pedalboards with everyone. You can have your own feed of pedalboards you share and you can browse other musicians pedalboars and import them with one click.

This feature was working very well in previous versions of MOD and I beleive will soon be available again!

Also, imagine answering a question on this forum with a pedalboard attached to it, so others can import it just by clicking on it in the browser!

1 Like
#5

@autostatic: thanks for your answers! Nice to hear most of the topics are being worked on.

About import / export pedalboards:
How can this be done? I tried to login via SSH, but failed because I don’t know the username and password :wink:
If you can help me with this, it would be an acceptable temporary solution.

About the CPU load:
I set up a quite complex pedalboard, that drove the CPU to about 80%. The first plugin in the chain is the guitarix manual wah, on/off and expression control are assigned to MIDI (Line 6 FBV Express MkII via USB). As long as I don’t move the expression pedal the sound is fine, but when the pedal is moved the CPU load gets higher (up to 100%) and some crackling occurs.
A similar problem relates to the use of (almost all) reverb plugins: if the CPU load already is quite high and you start to play, the CPU load raises and some crackling occurs. The CPU load seems to be dynamically requested by the plugins, depending on the audio input: as long as it’s almost silent, the CPU load is noticeable lower.
It’s clearly understandable that the CPU load is higher when the webserver is active, but this also happens when the MOD Duo was started “standalone”.
So showing the CPU load in a display might be useful to find out the limits when working on new pedalboards.

About the parametric EQ:
I use the “TAP Equalizer/BW”. At the TAP-plugins pages (http://tap-plugins.sourceforge.net/ladspa/eq.html) the gui looks more like I’d expected also at the MOD Duo: every band’s frequency, gain and bandwidth in a row.

#6

Just want to add a +1 request for convolver plugin. Would love to have this feature! :smiley:

1 Like
#7

Regarding EQs, we’ve promoted the x42 EQs to the stable branch and they have an awesome interface.

I really recommend.

#8

I just checked the x42 EQ… it’s much better than the TAP EQ… fantastic! :+1:

1 Like
#9

You should thank @x42 :slight_smile:

He’s the man!!

#10

Yeah, x42… you did a great job! Thanks! :guitar::slight_smile:

1 Like
#11

/me humbly stands on the shoulders of giants. and you’re very welcome!

1 Like
#12

My 3-channel amp setup is (almost) finished. I shared it at the pedalboards section, look for “3-Channel Amp Metal”.

The only thing I miss is an option to use a footswitch or MIDI CC to switch multiple plugins at the same time. So at this setup of the pedalboard the switching between rhythm and solo channel is just a compromise: I’d prefer to place the delay after the amp sim and switch on an eq for the solo channel.

#13

@120dBRockNRoll: the pedalboard presets feature will come in the near future. This will help a lot with this kind of compromise.

1 Like
#14

Excellent, I was just thinking that we needed the ability to use board-wide presets, a little how like “Scenes” work on automated lighting desks.

1 Like
#15

Yes. I have been playing with my DUO for about a week now and a “scene” idea will be great. Just to be able to turn on/off multiple effects with one button will help a lot of tap dancing.

I can think of two ways to achieve this.

  1. Save a “scene” and be able to turn on that scene with a switch with something like the Keith McMillen SoftStep. (Assign button 1 to scene 1, button 2 to scene 2, etc…)
  2. Make it like how TC-Helicon Voicelive3 does it with their “Step” button where you can scroll through the different scenes with just one button. Also the ability to assign a “back” button so you can scroll through forward or backwards. I like this because I like having a different setting for Intro/Verse/Chorus/Verse2/Chorus2/Bridge/Solo/Outro… I can put them in order and just hit one button when going into the next section.
#16

Hi,

We need to be sure to not confuse two things here:

  • Pedalboards
  • “Scene of FX”

Pedalboards are “heavy-weight” items, think like a saved session in your DAW. Do you switch save sessions on your DAW during a song? Me neither :slight_smile: So we don’t switch pedalboards during the song.

“Scenes” on the other hand, can be created by the user - with a togglebox of sorts. If the current toggle-boxes are not good enough, we can request better / different ones that do have the features we request.

@Skydiver: I see your setup as having say 4 different “scenes”:

  • Intro
  • Verse
  • Chorus
  • Solo
    (or maybe 5, with Bridge/Outro, or 6… )

These 5-or-so scenes needs to be switched in the same pedalboard in order for it to work glitch-free while on stage.

How do you want to control switching scenes:

  • Right foot-button = next
  • Left foot-button = previous?

Cheers, -Harry

#17

I’d like to be able to call any scene directly by a MIDI PC for each.
A simple previous/next function would be too limited.

#18

For me a scene is just a way to turn on/off multiple plugins at one time within the same pedalboard.

Agree!

I think it would be best to be able to assign this the way you want. I may want to use an external midi switch like SoftStep. But for now using Right=Next and Left=Previous would work great. However, I don’t know how this would work if a Tuner is implemented. Maybe press and hold will make it go into Tuner mode and mute the outputs or pass through (user definable)? I know I’m getting ahead of myself here… Just want to make sure the development team is keeping these things in mind.

It’s really nice to be a part of this conversation. Thanks for listening!

#19

A “scene” is what we are internally calling a “Pedalbboard preset”

This is coming soon and the idea is exactly to be able to change lots of different parameters instantly within the same pedalboard.

Probably on v.1.2 or v1.3

2 Likes
#20

[Edit] Just saw Gianfranco’s post above this one. What he said.[/Edit]
I see a scene as a snapshot of the paramater state of all the pedals on the pedalboard. I figure you could either assign a scene to a footswitch, or maybe have an up/down mechanism with the l/r footswitch. The key here is that it isn’t to do with switching the signal path like with a toggle box etc. With a scene I could completely change the amp settings, and turn on the chorus pedal, rather than having two amp models run in parallel with a switcher in front of them.

1 Like