We’re launching a new initiative to simultaneously improve our new user’s onboarding experience and celebrate the creativity of our pioneer users.
You are all part of MOD history and we want this history to be appreciated in the years to come. For this reason, we are going to publish what we call “The Great Book of Pedalboards”. It’s going to be a small publication with pedalboards from our community that users will receive with their Duos. These pedalboards will also be built into the units in neatly organized banks for additional plug’n’play fun.
If you want your pedalboards included in the Book, first share them on our feed (with an audio sample). Then, fill out this little form with a description of your creation (only six questions).
New members of the community will have this book as their first contact with the MOD Duo. Let’s welcome them in the best way we can
There’s a lot coming up in the next weeks so keep tuning in. We’re very fortunate to have you by our side in this journey!
this is fabulous, I’ll upload a couple more boards soon
How does board-sharing work with CC controls and switches assigned to external controllers? Most of my pedal boards are wholly reliant on the Softstep for control, so whoever was using them would need to map those switches to something external…
I’m so glad you’re onboard for the “GBP”! Didn’t expect any less from an outstanding chap such as you!
In the form, there are two main questions regarding the pedalboard: a description of the inputs and uses; and a description of the actuators and how to control it.
I’d say you should indicate to users what you use it with and what is mapped. It will serve as guidance for them to find out their own setup.
It’s not going to be an exact science, as one size pedalboard does not fit all users, so let us know your thoughts on this.
Well…
I think that the main purpose of sharing a pedalboard is to let other people try the setup you are really using.
Consistently when I share a pedalboard the final recorded sound sample end up being barely audible.
Most of my pedalboards are meant to go in front of a real guitar amp and I use a gain plugin with unit gain at the end of the chain.
To make it audible it is needed to raise the gain plugin to +7.5 db and that alters the main characteristic of the pedalboard. Also it is not practical doing that for a pedalboard with several sound presets and that makes very difficult to show what the pedalboard is capable off.
Thinking of sharing for the “GBP” I created a basic all purpose pedalboard so a user that is new to MOD could plug and start playing right out of the box but I got stuck when recording the sound sample.
I totally understand you @rogeriocouto
It makes a lot of sense actually. I’ve been so much into not using an amplifier anymore that I’ve not even considered the “pedal only” use case.
What do you suggest in such cases?
Do you think that when not using amp simulations the audio is helping or misleading?
I think in this case it might be useful to attatch a second recording (or replace the first) of the real output (mic before amp -> interface) but declare it correctly (what amp what mic and why - in my experience guitarists like that kind of technical exchange )
We are discussing two different points. First the overall volume of shared pedalboards sound samples and second the sound quality of the samples with no amp simulation.
(Maybe this discussion should be moved to a new topic)
About the second I think pedalboard audio samples with distortion plugins and no amp simulation are definitely misleading.
Listen bellow how a very simple recording done with a cell phone in front of a real amp sounds much better. MOD DS-1 Sound Sample
About the first I´m not shure how the MOD DUO handles the shared pedalboard recording but I think that implementing an audio normalization ( -1 dB ) and automatic fade in and out could make the results much better.
Also an option to include a basic amp/cab simulation at the sharing popup window would be great but please take into considaration that I´m not a programmer and have no clue on how much work this represents.
I think these are both great ideas! The latter should perhaps generate an automatic tag so users can easily tell that this pedalboard is meant to be played through an amp.
Actually on 2nd thought though, @rogeriocouto, are you setting your output gain to the lowest possible setting? If your signal is that quiet that the digital recording is very hard to hear, you aren’t using very much of the resolution of the DAC. Its probably plenty good, but if you can crank up the digital signal at the end of the chain and just attenuate it with the amp after the DAC it will be a “theoretically” better signal. With that setup you might have better success recording samples too. I haven’t played with the input/output gains much really so I’m not sure how much headroom there is there.
I took that into consideration and checked my volume and gain settings again. My output is set 0 Db in both outputs but my inputs were set to -6 Db which I altered to -5 Db and that give me occasionally yellow leds on the input.
The stereo gain plugin at the and of the pedalboard chain is set to 0 Db in all presets including one preset with no effects which I use to compare the volume with the hardware bypassed signal.
Hopefully the hardware bypassed signal will be equal to the processed “no effect” preset when I hit the front of my amp.
Ah but that just confirms exactly what I was thinking. Try this: 1. unplug your amp,and any headphones, etc. 2. Turn the stereo gain plugin at the end of the chain up until the output LEDs show red when you hit it hard, then back it off a tiny bit so it never clips (goes red). 3. Go to the gain settings in the menu and turn down the output gains. 4. plug in your amp and slowly turn up the output gains until it seems that your amp is getting the level you want.
0db out is pretty hot. Your amp can (heh) amplify a much quieter signal. Perhaps its counter intuitive, but you will actually have BETTER sound quality by turning it up digitally as loud as possible and turning DOWN the output gain to a reasonable level. Because your output gain has been so high, your patches have been designed to output teeny little quiet signals that get boosted by the output amp inside the MOD.
Does that make any sense? Give it a whirl and let me know if it doesn’t work.
I misinterpreted the audio signal flow and for some reason I thought that output volume control was before the DAC and for that reason I had it all the way up.
Now I have the gain plugin at +3 Db and the output rolled back to - 3.5 Db. That will give me better signal to noise ratio and the shared pedalboard sound samples will be a little louder.
All of this discussion could have been spared if I had paid better attention to the following @gianfranco post about the MOD audio signal flow: MOD DUO audio signal flow
Just wanted to specify something which might not be clear.
You can contribute with pedalboards that were already posted on the feed, no need to make new ones (unless you want to, which is great!). You just have to complete the form and provide the link to it.
We’ve already got some beautiful submissions but we’re sure there’s so many more that you could add (and we’re only putting in those that users have submitted via the form ).
As I use the pedal more and more, I have broken down my presets/pedalboards into different categories:
Headphone
Recording direct (which is basically the same as Headphones
In front of a stereo amp rig
4 wire method
…and this is just for guitar. I’m sure there are other applications too. Gianfranco, when you pre-load these pedalboards, it would be very helpful to break down the pedalboards into these use categories and load them into separate banks.
).