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The cab selections in non-Studio/Direct modes use "live-voiced" cabs which are a mild EQ effect designed to make whatever real cabinet you are using sound more like the cab model selected in the cab. Note: although you can change the selected microphone and there is a gap in audio as you change selections, it has no effect on the tone. These are disabled by selecting "no cab".
These have also been called cab simulation without mic simulation. "Cab simulation" is the wrong name. By itself, it does not come close to the frequency response changes made by real guitar speakers - it is designed to supplement, not replace, a real guitar cabinet (or speaker simulator/IR). Without such, "cab simulation" will sound nothing like a real guitar cabinet, mic'ed or not. It will be very harsh.
Input 1 is routed into the left side of the first line in the signal. Input 2 is routed into the right side. This is important to know if you plan on using multiple instruments simultaneously.
When the signal hits a stereo effect, each half of the signal is processed separately and output to the same side of the stereo field that it entered. When a signal hits a mono effect (including amp models), the stereo signal is mixed down into a mono signal, processed by the effect, then split back into a stereo signal with equal left and right signals. See [[Line 6 Pod HD Effects#Mono-Summing vs. Stereo|the effects page]] to see which effect is stereo or mono.
Use this method if you want to run the Pod straight into a PA system, mixing board or mixing board for live purposes or a computer/DAW, home stereo, or headphones for recording or practicing. The Pod will completely simulate a guitar rig - amp (including pre-amp and power amp) and speakers (including cabinet). If you want, you can disable some of these features and use other gear to get that tone - like a speaker simulator device or a convolution reverb device/software that is using an impulse response (IR) designed to mimic a guitar cabinet.
You can additionally use effects from the Pod or use external effects, placing them before the Pod or in its effects loop (or even after if you use 1/4" or XLR output).
The above settings should work well for most gear. But perhaps your gear is different, or perhaps you simply have different tastes about what is harsh or sounds good. As long as you're not running the output of a real power amp into the Pod or other effect (high watt power amp output should only be run into speakers or a dummy load) or sending a line level (mostly anything not coming from an actual instrument) signal into the Pod's instrument level Guitar In input, you probably won't break anything by experimenting.
My friend used to run his Boss multi-FX processor into his Fender amp, and he got the best tone by using the speaker simulation in the Boss unit, even though he was running into real guitar speakers. When he told me his settings, I thought, "That's not right" and tried to tweak his gear how I thought it should be set up. I could never get a better tone than what he already dialed in using the "wrong" settings. Whatever gets you the best tone and doesn't break your gear is how you should run it, no matter how many people say that your settings are "wrong".
''The simplest is to use the FX Loop effect block.'' Place the FX Loop at the end of either one of the channel paths, right before the mixer. At the mixer, mute the channel with the FX Loop to guarantee no signal is passing through. For the other channel, set the pan to full center - this allows both sides of the stereo spectrum for that channel to pass through to the analog outputs on the unit.
The upside for this method is that you get two stereo outputs (FX loop send is a stereo output). Also, if you don't want to use multiple/special cables to extract the stereo output, you can just use a single 1/4" unbalanced cable for each signal to get mono output. The downside is that you need to place the FX Loop before the mixer, so you have to apply any post-amp effects twice - once in each channel, which can run into DSP limit errors.
With firmware v1.4 the PodHD got variable input impedance. Line6 says before this the impedance was always set to 1M, but I feel like something changed...for the better. The unit seems more responsive to me. Anyway, I like this setting at 1M or 3.5M. This allows the loudest, tightest, and brightest tone to pass from guitar to Pod, which helps dial in the high gain tones I like. If you prefer a muddier or fuzzier distortion or looser feel, you may want a lower value.
For the F-Ball amp model, I find it can get kind of gritty and nasty for the distortion if your guitar signal is a bit bright. When I want a smooth tone from this model, normally I like to use a Mid-Focus EQ to roll-off enough high-end to smooth the tone out. However, if I don't have enough DSP or effects blocks to do so, I will turn down the impedance to attenuate some highs. I like it around 230K for this.