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Digital devices feature the additional danger of digital clipping, where the signal level exceeds the digital resolution and produces a harsh distortion. Yet, if you follow proper gain staging, the principles are exactly the same. ''You will only achieve digital clipping by setting a gain stage too high'' (provided you aren't clipping the unit at its input A>D converter).
Some of the controls in the Pod adjust the signal level digitally, rather than emulate an analog gain stage. For instance, the amp block's Ch. Vol. (VOLUME knob) is not simulating analog circuitry. I believe the mixer levels and volume effect operate the same way. This basically takes the consideration of a noise floor out of the equation, but replaces it with loss of precision. Setting one of these REALLY low will not add noise to the tone but will introduce slight manipulations to the signal's waveform and lose certain details. ''Similar to distortion concerns, it's best to treat everything like an analog gain stage, setting them high enough to preserve the signal integrity.''
I believe the Pod has three actual analog gain stages - FX Loop Send/Receive and the Master Knob (the right-most physical knob on the unit). Same rules as usual apply.
''Note: the MASTER knob only affects the tone sent to the analog outputs. '' For the digital outputs (AES, SPDIF, USB), the signal is never converted back to an analog signal and never hits the analog Master Knob gain stage. The Pod's signal is mostly digital; it goes:
* Input Source > A/D convertors > digital signal processing > D/A conversion > Master knob attenuation > analog outputs