I’m a guitar player and I’m now almost convinced to pull the trigger and buy the Mod Dwarf but I would like to ask a few questions about the product.
My idea is to take advantage of the AidaX and NAM loaders but I know they take a lot of CPU usage. Also I’ll need an expression pedal. I own a Line6 Pod HD500X (served well for years) so I thought I could use the Dwarf in the effects loop of the Pod HD500X. This way I could use the expression pedal as a wah at the beginning of the signal chain or as a volume pedal at the end of it. Maybe I could even use some of the POD effects to save some of the Dwarf CPU? My main concern would be the latency of the whole rig. I’m not very picky about latency but I wouldn’t like to find out that it’s too uncomfortable to play and be forced to buy an expression pedal.
AIDA models work super fine. NAM models need to be “nano” weight, which makes it unusable in practice, as the NAM folks have not provided a way to find those in ToneHunt.
Regarding your suggested pairing of the POD & Dwarf, 8ms of latency will be added by the Dwarf to the rig. I could not find the latency of the POD, so I can’t tell you the overall latency.
Seriously? Well, I saw videos of ppl using the NAM nano models so I guessed they could be found at least in this forum?
Anyway, 8 ms seems pretty good too me and with the POD all I can remember it was around 14 ms when using it as an audio interface. It might be lower for live playing. I guess I’ll have to find out by myself.
Thanks a lot for your response! Keep up the good work!
As NAM already had the Tonehunt tool, we asked people not to post NAM models here in the forum and resort directly to Tonehunt.
In theory it should have been a good decision, as Tonehunt added the “nano-mdl” tag making it easy to identify the models with the nano weight. But the reality is that the Tonehunt tagging system never worked
I’ve contacted the Tonehunt guys at their discord channels and they are aware of the issue, but months have passed ever since. Right now, if you try to list the models with the nano-mdl tag it continues not working: #nano-mdl Models | ToneHunt
I’ve been reading about the midi connectivity of the POD HD500X and found it can work pretty well as a midi controller. I’ve also read that dwarf uses TRS 3.5mm Type A connectors so idk if I could use the POD as a midi controller for the Dwarf as POD only has midi ports and doesn’t support any midi over USB.
I have no experience using midi so I’m wondering if there’s a way to link both devices using a hybrid cable (if that exists). It would be great to use the expression pedal in the POD as a midi controller as well as the foot switches.
@Techno As someone who used to use the Pod HD500 (not X, haha) as a midi controller for my Kemper rig that used the Mod Duo in the FX Loop, I can tell you that it’s almost not worth the hassle. Not because it didn’t work - it did - but it was very heavy to lug around and took a lot of extra space on the floor. I would try and find a suitable midi controller that uses midi over usb.
That being said, if you insist on using the HD500X, I believe you can try one of these cables on Amazon: Amazon.com or Amazon.com.
But it would also allow me to have a backup rig while I adjust to the dwarf (I have all the presets for our songs saved in there) and also use the expression pedal and extra switches.
In time I would definitely aim for something more compact like this by one of the forum users
Were you happy with the sounds having the dwarf working in the FX loop? No degradation in the signal quality or anything like that? Any latency issues?
Thanks for the links too!
Edit: I just looked at the cables and they are midi to USB. My idea was midi to jack midi. Is it better to use the USB ones?
Sorry for the late response… I had the Duo and in my FX Loop and I loved it. I think the only issue I had was matching the volume… when I had the FX Loop off (circumventing the Duo), it got louder and slightly clearer… so just keep that in mind when you are using the Dwarf in the loop. Just try and bypass and do some volume matching. Overall, the Dwarf/Duo in the FX Loop was really handy for me.
Regarding Midi to USB… I don’t think it really matters, and maybe Midi to USB is better because it’s digital? I don’t even know, but I do know that Midi is an old technology, so I would imagine USB is better.
Well, I saw videos of ppl using the NAM nano models so I guessed they could be found at least in this forum?
