Yeah, that would be amazing! a little review section and a search engine where you could order the plugins by rating or something like that would make it very approachable too 
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I’m still going through all the posts and kind of enjoying what you @Matt and you @LievenDV are actively trying to start here offering already your help.
Sure MOD devices have quite some room for improvement, sure you can already get great things, sure that there’s a lot of potencial, sure it needs to be converted into real thing and sure we are a small team…but we have a great and super capable community that can help us a lot. So it’s nice to see things like this moving.
Not because we are lazy or we want to clean our hands from some decisions. It’s really a lot of time that we miss between bug fixes, software improvements less deep and disruptive, checking each single device that we ship, dealing with production issues, answering all of you in all possible channels that we can find, dealing with marketing efforts, creation of videos, documentation, etc., normal business (meaning: we need to also care about sales) and many many other things…and we are indeed a small team, so a lot goes really really slow in all this process.
But we have you guys! A great community, super engaged, super helpful and also really tech savy (I still think that some of you here know more about the devices that some of us internally - including me - do. So maybe we can find here a nice thing for both sides.
Sure there are some handicaps and limitations like permission from the plugin developers or willing to do certain things. But everything is always possibly when there’s enough interest and benefits on all the sides together with a nice support and communication…at least I believe on this.
I tend to agree on this statement quite a lot. Sure you can get some basics and starting points. But a clean sound will simply not be the same with single coils or humbuckers. And we are not talking about wood types, strings, picks, etc. So, putting that in a few drawers gives always room for a lot of questions (at least from me). I actually sometimes think that that can be sometimes a handicap of the digital world vs the analog world. I want to use presets, but my presets.
Every time that I get a new setup or software to play guitar, one of the first things that I try to do is to build a nice clean, a nice crunch, and a nice high gain sound together with the guitar that I want to use it with…all the fairly basic. 70% of the time after that I need to create a new tone I always start from one of those, depending on the needs. And I also do it for my most weird and experimental guitar tones. But they are my presets done for my guitar and my hands, not the offer of the developer/producer.
Noted and saved as a request 
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And that’s cool …
when you guys launch an update, is is really worth it.
Like when you added an actual filesystem. That’s an impressive milstone
Then there were recording possibilities. That expands the scope and potential even more.
Marketing and sales are less close to your core and perhaps you are all just too nice and friendly for that? 
just kidding You’ve got your prio’s right and that’s what counts.
You inspire us as you inspire yourself and that’s gold.
you know where to find us; even if it is small, stupid, simple questions!
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I just meant that I’m not in the position to decide where we can afford to spend time and resources on this among other priorities. For sure I think we would all agree it’s worth doing. Even the boss haha. But it has to fit in somewhere.
That’s awesome that you offer to help and for sure you would be able to improve our capacity. That’s the beauty of an open-source community. I just think that we have a few decisions to make here first and we would like to establish a style guide. Perhaps we could create a topic for this when we are ready so we can open up to you guys for collaboration when we have a better idea of what needs to be done.
Indeed you already contributed a lot by providing detailed feedback and suggestions
We have been conceptualizing a tagging and rating system for the plugins which will likely come into some upcoming efforts to improve plugin curation
and you inspire us! thanks for the kind words
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Great the users are getting to have this discussion. We all need to promote Mod (and in my case Dwarf) so everyone making plugins of any kind sees enough interest to port them to LV2. And I encourage everyone to buy a few pedals. If there is a market (actual money for developers), it means competition and better products for us all.
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Perfect. Thanks for the explanation on gain staging. As a long time keyboard player just getting into guitar playing properly, I’m used to MainStage where that kind of gain staging just happens in the background without any user thought.
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Thanks for your reply, @Matt! I am actually quite fond of presets because if they are well-thought, they can quickly showcase what a pedal can do.
But yes, this a --IMHO – a big problem. Because one does not know the intended volume needed to “push an amp pedal into overdrive” or achieve the desired sound.
I look very much forward to hear what you come up with!
I could surely do the dsp side, when you define what exactly you want to have in the single breakouts, but, I can’t do the graphics, as I’m not skilled enough in design.
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Do you smell that MOD team(@jon @James @jesse @falkTX)? What is that? It smells like money opportunity!
Looks like we have the dev willing to do the thing (thanks @brummer! I think every member of the community would agree, that this is awesome!). I can certainly spend a few evenings doing some extensive testing of the competing plugins, and provide Hermann with the specification requested above.
So it looks like the only missing piece is the UI, can the MOD team handle this? And if not, can you please provide us with the necessary specifications (file types, size, everything else that’s relevant)? I’m not a graphic designer either but I could do some digging. Maybe a member of the community would be willing to draw some sick-looking amps and knobs once we settle on a design?
This is a great opportunity to show the advantage of MOD over the closed, and proprietary nature of the competing systems. We’re very close to making a very useful and important addition to the MOD’s plugin suite so let’s make it happen.
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What a great post!
BTW, loved the Marie Kondo joy images
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This is really great to hear. We had a chat about this yesterday in the office and would like to reach out soon!
Hahaha yes, there is definitely a nice smell in the air however I can assure you that the 4 of us wouldn’t see any money from this but we are excited about improving the amp offerings!
The challenge for us is that we (at least definitely me) are quite interested in the project and would prefer to be responsible for the specification and graphic design (maybe being a bit of a control freak) but I think this is due to the fact that a few of us have had a desire to improve the amp offering for a long time and already have a lot of ideas of how we would want things.
The reality is though, that we are swamped with a lot of already half-finished projects and something like this really could slow us down on other things. It’s beneficial for us and for you to involve the community (or leave it to the community) rather than us trying to step in and take on a new project.
I guess we need to find a middle ground. Perhaps we can put some things in place first with some collaboration from you guys.
As mentioned before, we (Andre and I) would really like to release a design guide that suggests a standardised set of plugin dimensions to use based on each type of plugin, a set of standardised knobs/control sizes as well as a standardised distance between knobs/controls. I think it would be nice to have this before any major work goes into re-designing a lot of GUIs or making new ones.
On top of this we could provide some refreshed assets for creating GUIs. I’m the guy that does all the fancy 3D rendered images of the devices (like the header of this forum) and I’ve been daydreaming for years about making some 3D rendered templates for amps, cabinets and pedals to use as GUIs. Something like this could be nice to use in a GUI refresh of these plugins. But this may need to come later as it is a bit of a time investment.
So I would say at least we would try to start working on a design guide and we could open a topic about that for people to collaborate.
In parallel, we could start a conversation (probably in this topic) about specifying either, new amps from GuitarX which are simplified splits/combinations of the current offering.
OR
Specify some changes to make to the existing offering that could simplify their use and make it easier to find a good tone + a GUI refresh. I tend to prefer this rather than adding more to the already large selection from GuitarX to reduce option paralysis without removing any plugins that people are happy using already. Some ideas for this could be
- Hide some parameters from the GUI (but leave in settings to not break people’s boards)?
- Adjust the values of parameters to be more consistent (0-100 rather that 0-127)?
- Add the cream machine power amp to the amps that don’t have a power amp section (allembic. this combo is amazing) with a toggle to turn it off if you only want the pre-amp
- GUI refresh
- GUI per model? Not sure if this is possible but for the AmpX, perhaps when you change the amp model in the drop-down to be “twin reverb” the GUI could change to look like a twin? Maybe this is abstract but could mean you don’t need to split the AmpX into a plugin for every model.
Interested to know what you guys think
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I already messaged @brummer some of my initial ideas.
Amp X already sounds very good and writing brand new code is likely unrealistic. My suggestion would be to repurpose what’s already there, in order to create 3 plugins (low, mid, and high gain amps) that would cover the needs of 90% of players as far as basic tones are concerned (and for all the other players, there’s AmpX, Alembic, Cream Machine, Onyx, Titan, Supersonic, etc.)
Since clean/edge of break up tones are where I exist most of the time, I did some initial testing (using Petrucci/Henson Neural DSP plugins as a reference - not to ‘copy’ them of course, but to get the idea for the gain ranges available in their “Clean” amps) and it turns out that creating an amp that would cover mostly clean sounds using Amp X should be rather straightforward:
I typed “in comparison” when talking about the output section in the picture above but I meant “in conjunction”. It almost makes sense anyway, but I’m pointing this out for the sake of clarity.
Leaving the Drive and Distortion controls, at 0 make the range of the Pregain (should probably be called “Gain” in the final version) lend itself very well to producing clean and the edge of breakup tones (up until like 3/4th of the way depending on the chosen Tube section). The amp can still get that hairy/distorted sound with the gain all the way up, and all in all, this seems to be working extremely well. As mentioned I did some testing with the Petrucci/Henson plugins, and there, the “Clean” amp behaves in a very similar way (the range of the gain knob is mostly clean and the amp gets dirty only when the gain is close to max).
When it comes to which tube sections/tone stacks to make available to the user, and how to name them, that would require some thinking. Tone stacks would be easier, something like Twin, J-45, AC-15 for clean. It’s probably best to use terms that are somewhat vague to give the user a good general idea of what they are working with, but not build false expectations that the “Twin” will be exactly like their Twin tube amp (call it “American” or “American Clean”, or something even more abstract like “Silver” for Fender, “Gold” for Marshall, “Red” for Vox instead, etc. the specific tone stacks can be mentioned in the amp’s description).
MOD already has great sounding and looking cabs in the store. Besides, it simply makes sense to the user these days, that amps should be “complete” (include preamp → tone stack → power amp) and no cab sim. Nothing against the Cream Machine but all the parts of the Amp X already work great so there’s no need to add that on top.
Mid and High gain amp would require a bit more testing, but this is how all the amps would look like in general:
- Gain (Pregain on Amp X)
- 2 position switch (for switching between two most applicable tube sections for the character of the specific amp, names hidden from the user but can be mentioned in amp description.)
- Tone stack controls (Bass, Middle, Treble, Presence).
- 3 position switch to choose between the most appropriate tone stack for the character of the specific amp.
- Volume (Mastergain on Amp X).
- Master volume (Output - so the user doesn’t have to use gain plugins outside the amp for gain-staging, which is very important).
The high gain amp could likely use an additional control (access to either Drive or Clean/Distortion that would be arbitrarily set for the other two amps).
When it comes to the naming convention, UI considerations, etc. I deffer back to you @James because this post is already long enough, but I’ve alluded to some of my initial ideas (I’m really trying not to use Neural DSP again as an example, but their stylistic choice of streamlining, simplifying, and not even referring to “real amps” but rather the “archetypes”, if you will, seem to resonate with players).
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This one sparks joy! 
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do you see any way this could happen without adding new plugins?
Me too. I’m a big fan of the Cory Wong amp from Neural as well some amps from Amplitube such as the Fender SuperReverb as well as the Red Pig (Marshall Major clone) that I plan with very low gain to keep it mostly clean.
I agree with this. Since this set up would be pretty much aiming for a Fender Twin Reverb like tone (a staple which I think we should definitely have) it would be great if the controls closely resembled the ones on that amp. This would really help to reduce the onboarding confusion for players used to these amps. Maybe even adding reverb to the amp would make a lot of sense.
I second this. More recognisable names would help because most guitarists know the amps but don’t know the names of the preamps and poweramps.
I partially agree with this, however for some people, it might be nicer to just have a “delux reverb” or a “twin reverb” that has everything in one like the real thing. Preamp, Reverb, Poweramp and Cab. Although the IR cabsims are hard to beat
Maybe it makes sense just to focus on the clean one in the beginning
I really like them too. They all kinda look uniform but have their own style which I really like. Maybe me and Andre can come up with the kind of template and then the we can ask for inspiration from the commuinty for the colours, materials and textures. Or give assets for you guys to play around with
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I don’t think that is possible without break backwards compatibility.
As it requires to redefine the range/amount of the controllers. Beside that it may be a good point to update the Guitarix tube simulations to the latest upstream for those new plugs.
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I was curious about what you had in mind here, but even though I’m not a dev I suspected this:
To be the issue. I’d still love to hear what you had in mind of course.
I think this is a bit of a trap from the PR but also, and more importantly, a user experience standpoint. Not that MOD has a ton of content around it on the interwebz, but guitar players love comparisons, and while my testing revealed that with Drive/Distortion at 0, and Twin tone stack, Amp X’s Gain and Volume knobs produce pleasing Fender-ish clean/edge of breakup tones, inviting direct comparison to a certain amp maybe a tiny bit misleading. Even NeuralDSP doesn’t reference any real amps directly in their Archetype plugins (they may mention or allude to what their “Clean” is modeling but it doesn’t say that anywhere in the plugin itself, it’s just what users really need to know - “a Clean amp”), they only do that on the Cortex.
Speaking of Quad Cortex (and Helix, and Boss/Hotone/Nux/Mooer/Harley Benton, etc.) virtually all of the multi-fx units, differentiate between an “Amp” block (as in pre/power amp and tone stack) and “Cab” blocks (either stock cab or IR). Some of them may allow the user to use Amp + Cab block (Helix) but even then they are still independent (they just occupy less space in the chain, but the interfaces of both blocks are still separate). To put it simply, guitar players are kinda nuts about their cabs/IR’s these days.
Some of the multi-fx units may offer the option to not model the power amp (to accommodate the users who choose to use a real one, though that’s somewhat rare), but the industry standard is “Amp” and “Cab” as separate elements (which, is also something most MOD plugins like Supersonic, Onyx, Titan, etc. uphold).
While MOD may be in a more pressing need of a more “high gain option” I think I have to agree with this. The low gain amp as a “proof of concept” should be the easiest to implement in a high-quality format. If it goes well, the mid and high gain amps would also become much faster and easier to implement.
Love it!
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In a somewhat anti-climactic turn of events, I decided to return my Dwarf. I’ve spent a lot of time testing the plugins inside the Dwarf against free and paid VSTs, that I already have on my machine, hoping I could provide the MOD team and @brummer with some insights, and in this process, I realized two important things. MOD - while decent - didn’t compare favourably to the plugins (often free ones) I was shooting it out against, and - perhaps more importantly - I could’ve been making music instead. The unfavourable comparison wasn’t so much in the tone department (besides, one player’s “warm” is another player’s “muddy”, so I’ll abstain from making any definitive claims here) but certainly in the ease of use/speed of getting the desired effect. The subtle fact that MOD is less responsive than plugging straight into the interface (by whole 3ms but actually 11ms given that MOD was also plugged in), and that free IR loader in my DAW doesn’t have the 2.6ms limitation, didn’t help things either. Neither did the fact that plugins that are out of beta offer control in ranges of 0-127 or -4-20 (?) where a user would expect to see % or ms or dB.
Instead of listing all the reasons why I’m no longer a MOD user (pending Thomann’s acceptance of my unit, but that shouldn’t be an issue given that it spent 100% of its time safely on my desk), I’d encourage you to really take this topic seriously. I want to be fair so I will begin by stating that MOD is very powerful. Unfortunately, this turned out to be somewhat irrelevant in my current workflow. Coming up with a complex live looping patch to… record into Ableton, or using Dexed/TAL/.sf3 loader when I already have those inside my DAW, with user interfaces that are easier to operate, presets that are easier to load, etc were both exercises in needless redundancy, but could’ve been invaluable if I had to routinely unplug and go DAWless. I still appreciate the fact that Dwarf can do so much more than guitar multi-fx units, however, it’s currently also worse at being a guitar multi-fx unit, than even some of the lower-end offerings from other companies (with lower latency/more robust IR support, etc.). I doubt it will ever get close to the HX, Fractal, or Quad Cortex territory (technically sky is the limit, but scouring the depths of the interwebz for good lv2 plugins curbed my optimism in that department considerably) but at this moment, I wouldn’t compare it favourably even against the lower end units.
I realize that the MOD team is very small (and from the interactions I had with you all - pretty amazing), and I’m not sure how important the guitar player market is to you (this may not have been intentional, but it looks like the MOD products suit synth/electronic music producers better than guitar players, despite the much more ‘stompbox-y’ design of the Dwarf when compared to Duo) but if that’s a client base that you seriously consider, the proper IR support should likely be much higher on your list of priorities. When it comes to the amps… I’ve already written a lot on this subject. Bottom line is that LV2 is a niche (I was hopeful initially, but research after the MOD purchase curbed my enthusiasm considerably) Guitarix is likely your best bet, and it looks like @brummer is willing to help.
Lastly, and I guess it is somewhat important to put this whole thing in context - I’m not a cork-sniffing tone monster. I don’t have, nor do I want a stack of tube amps and cabs (one small 5w combo is more than enough in my book). I’m used to plugging my guitar direct in. Hell, I’ve been plugging in straight through Joyo American Sound (30euro analog ‘amp sim’) into my interface with some good reverb/delay/saturation plugins behind it, and getting some of my favourite tones that way. I suspect, there are a lot of players who would judge their guitar experience with Dwarf far less favourably. MOD is almost there, the IR support, some decent, good looking, user-friendly amps, and a bit of general UI polish is really all that’s needed, but even though I really wanted to love it, and really wanted to help, I have enough trouble progressing in my music-making endeavours as it is. Who knows, maybe in 1, 2, 3 years I’ll get the Dwarf again. I wish you all the best till then.
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I agree with most of your thoughts, the general feeling is that Dwarf wants to be like modern guitar amp modelers but inherits an ecosystem that is not designed around guitar/bass players (even if it is the most flexible on the market). All it needs to be more intriguing for guitar players is a bunch of well made amp plugins and all the tricks here and there under the hood in order to reduce the noise (when I use my other modelers, that’s the first main difference I spot: near zero noise). I’m also afraid that usability also is a big concern for major audience, most “sunday guitar players” (90% of guitar players market, I suppose) wants ease of use at first. Market nowadays offers a lot of good quality products at very low budget and I think that following the mainstream (about usage and sound quality improvements) is something that has to be done, otherwise MOD Dwarf will remain a niche product for nerdy guitar players. The effort to put into the game is still enormous for MOD Devices but not out of reach. IMHO following aspects must be improved to attract more guitar players:
-
Noise reduction at zero level
-
UI usability (think about a simplified UI for Dwarf only like NUX MG30 and the like)
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5 to 10 high quality amp modeling plugins (but people will look at figures where other cheap modelers already offer 30 to 50 amplifiers. Cuvave Cube Baby alone has 9 amps).
-
PLUS: top notch profiling feature (dreaming of a Kemper-like subsystem for sharing and selling profiles. Selling opportunity would attract profile creators. Profiling is way easier than coding an amp modeling plugin).
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I can sympathize - I agree with your points and have had similar moments of feeling like I spent my creative time on technical matters. It has been interesting to see the evolution from when the Duo and ancestors were conceived largely by and for guitar players but also got a lot of interest from a wide swath of musicians with lots of different interests. I thought the introduction of the ModX was a bet or recognition of the popularity of EDM styles (and remembering that sales volume for guitars pre-pandemic were not something to be optimistic about). The Dwarf looks like it will be a significant upgrade in terms of CPU capability, form factor, and platform usability compared to the Duo and while I’m excited to get mine, I don’t plan on using much as a guitar modeller. I’ve written a detailed comparison elsewhere in the forum and had the same conclusions that the creative experience is much more enjoyable with the dedicated modeller, and I’ll stick with that.
Acknowledging that I and others have clearly achieved some satisfying outcomes, the devices are well capable of producing amazing tones, no question. Especially in the realm of modulated effects, you can make some incredibly freaky, trippy, heavenly, glitchy, drone-y, harmonious, floaty tones. Like you, the building and tuning experience is more tedious and opaque than what I’m usually looking for. It’s also been my experience that the Duo was my only noisy pedal though I was able to tame most of it via dedicated power / battery and lots of gain staging and experimentation.
Now I view the MOD devices more like Swiss Army Knives - something unique that’s useful in many different contexts even if there are other more purposed options available. With the addition of the filesystem, better loopers, and extra CPU I’m hoping to use my Dwarf in several ways:
- Using backing tracks, MIDI loops, sequencers, and the loopers for jamming and recording demos
- Using it for vocal EQ and modulation
- Using it with a battery for busking, open mics, casual gigs
- Enhancing my one-man-band playing with backing tracks / beats, mixing vocals and guitar, harmonizing vocals and/or guitar
- Doing some occasional synth work for adding pads and swells to recordings
- Using it as a Send/Return to generate awesome modulated tones
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First I just want to say that we absolutely take this thread seriously. I hope I didn’t give you the wrong impression there. All of your suggestions are super helpful and we definitely intend to work on them!
I can completely understand the sentiment of not wanting to spend time troubleshooting and just wanting to use what works for you to do the thing you want to do which is making music! No hard feelings. I hope you stick around in the forums to follow along with the progress.
I agree with both of you guys and you have pointed out some very valid points!
We do want to make the device easier to use and most importantly easier to get the desired result you’re looking for!
We have put some work into this area. We added the noise compensation tool which was a big improvement! we also added the noise gate into the input and output processing which is another big improvement. We are trying to find better power supplies to include with the device and are doing a lot more to try to make this even better
This is a big one. Our current roadmap has an emphasis on improving elements in the UI to make it act more like how you would expect it to, coming from other environments. We also have a lot of room to make some quality of life improvements here so we really appreciate the suggestions from the community.
We are also looking forward to adding an on device patch builder to make things easier for the middle tier user who has moved past the inbuilt presets but perhaps is still a bit intimidated by the web GUI
On this I couldn’t agree more. Part of it is about curation (presenting the best amps so they are easy to find), Also improving the GUIs of the plugins as well as getting more amp plugins. I’ve been saying it since I first joined MOD. We need more amps! not a large quantity, but just a reliable set across a range of styles. It’s a bit of a chicken egg problem. We need to sell more devices to make the marketplace apealing for amp plugin developers, and we need more amp plugins to sell more devices. So it feels like it moves slowly
Something else that has an emphasis in the roadmap is to improve sharing. The pedalboard feed is a great idea that needs some work. Hopefully we can make some big improvements there soon too!
For sure! there are many other reasons to have the device outside of modeling and we’re happy about that!
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