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Line 6 Pod HD Tips and Pitfalls

No change in size, 03:20, 8 October 2015
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The more tracks you lay down the thicker it will sound. But that also means that it can become too thick and sound like mush. If you end up with such a mix, try doing starting off with less distortion on your tones.
I try to start with my instruments pre-mixed more-or-less. I want each instrument to have a unique frequency range emphasized, so that they all stand out and do not clash with each other. For guitars, that's generally around 250-1,500 HZHz.
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=== Bad Room ===
Also watch out for bass traps and other madness in the location you are tweaking. I was going crazy thinking the Pod just had crazy issues with the 120 HZ Hz frequency spot, as all my low B notes had a lot more bass than any other notes. I blamed the Pod and was setting up all my patches to suck out bass in that range, then my patches sounded like crap in other settings. I blamed my monitors. Only recently did I figure out it's my room. I've limited myself to mastering my patches using good headphones, or by walking around the room to listen at different places. The tone has drastically less bass across the room.
Ideally, the best way around this is to treat your room. Do some research on this. You don't want to cover every inch of your walls and ceiling with foam wedges - the room will sound "dead". Foam wedges probably aren't even cost effective, but they are easier to put up than buying rigid insulation and building frames and fabric covers.
Every rookie guitarist makes the mistake of dialing in his patches at bedroom level, only to get to practice (or worse a gig) and discover that his tone makes his amp very unhappy or is way too harsh. This is in part due to the frequency response amps and speakers expect - very bass or treble-heavy tones may cause them to distort. But it also has to do with how the human ear perceives loudness differently over frequency and sound pressure levels. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contours this Wikipedia entry] on the subject.
In those diagrams you'll notice two main things - the exponential curve on the left-hand side from 20 HZ Hz - ~400 HZ Hz and the smaller dip centered around 3-4 kHZkHz. The curve on the left means you'll have to dial in more and more bass at lower and lower volumes to have it sound the same as at higher volumes. So if you tweak at low volumes, getting a nice thick bass in the tone, at louder volumes the bass will overwhelm the tone, likely causing your amp or speakers to distort. The dip at 3-4 kHZ kHz means at lower volumes, you'll dial in too little in that range compared to the 5-8 kHZ kHz treble. When you turn the volume up, you have not enough mids and too much treble.
Thus, good tones at high volumes often sound wimpy at lower volumes - they don't seem to have enough bass and warmth, and can sound a little cold. Also, they tend to emphasize more mids, especially the upper mids/lower treble around 3 kHZkHz, which can make them sound tinny and thin.
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