Review: Pod HD

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are reviewing a Line 6 product, Line 6 Pod Hd Desktop!

Here you can read an article about the story and evolution of Pod, through all the Line 6 product lineup

This model is part of the Pod lineup, and it has been in production since 2012, although in 2013 is produced with the name POD HD X, because it has received a bump in the CPU specs in order to process better certain dual amp simulations that were particularly heavy in terms of resources.

The Pod Hd comes as usual in desktop version (this one in review), floorboard and rack version, and the difference between them is essentially in the amount of inputs and outputs.

This desktop version is really a swiss army knife: it can be used for the first time by two musicians at the same time, for example for a live acoustic duo with one guitar and one voice, and it has for the first time presets and amp models also for voice and bass (this is, in facts, the first generation of Pods that doesn't have a Bass Pod version).

The Xlr input has useful advantages, since it turns the unit finally into a full featured Usb audio interface that can finally be used for recording vocals, bass and guitar with good quality and low latency, also thanks to good drivers and a good managing software, that lets us also get into deep editing with relative ease.

The new hardware lets us enjoy great effect models and a good preamp section, although it's unexplainable why line 6 has chosen to not make the unit compatible with impulse responses, damaging the product when compared with an Axe Fx and Kemper, since we all know that the weak point of digital amp simulators has always been the speaker simulation section. 

Anyway the modeling is quite realistic, especially in the clean and overdrive area, in which for the first time in the Pod history we can really feel a good dynamic range and touch response.

The Pod Hd has also received through the year several firmware updates that has added more free amp and effect models, plus the support for additional paid model packs (a practice that to be honest we don't support, because we think that these software expansions should all be included in the price of the hardware unit).

The final judgement is positive, because the unit lets us (with a very good quality to price ratio) have amps and effects simulations, and a full featured audio interface good also for recording vocals and bass at 24 bit and up to 48khz. 

Specs taken from the website:

List of modeled amps:

• Fender® Twin Reverb®
• Hiwatt® Custom 100 (DR103)
• Supro® S6616
• Gibson® EH-185
• Fender® Bassman®
• Fender® Blackface Deluxe Reverb®
• Divided by 13 JRT 9/15
• Dr. Z® Route 66
• Vox® AC-15
• Vox® AC-30 (Top Boost)
• Marshall® JTM-45 MkII
• Park 75
• Marshall® JCM-800 (2204)
• Bogner® Uberschall
• Mesa/Boogie® Dual Rectifier®
• ENGL® Fireball 100

• 19 delays (including cool tube and solid-state tape echoes)
• 23 modulations (including both blackface-style opto and brownface bias-modulating tremolo, phasers, choruses and pitch effects)
• 17 distortions (classic stompbox distortion, to vintage fuzz, to thick metal chunk)
• 26 filters (including wahs and several exclusive custom filters)
• 12 compressors and EQs (including stomp comps and studio tube compression)
• 12 reverbs (from surfy springs, to studio plates, to cutting-edge digital room sounds)

• 512 user-writable preset locations and built-in tuner with signal mute
• Essential Project Studio ins and outs: ¼-inch input, XLR input, stereo balanced outs, phones, USB 2.0, S/PDIF out and FBV expression pedal control.

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How to use the arranger track and the scratch pad in our DAW (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to talk about an interesting tool that will help us when writing or arranging a song, present in many of the most famous DAW in the market: the Arranger Track.

The arranger track is a sometimes overlooked instrument which can actually make us save a lot of time when writing a song, or when preparing different versions of the same song (for example an extended version, a radio edit, a 30 seconds commercial soundtrack version etc) without having to create a new project for each one.

Usually the arranger track works like this, for every Daw: you create it, then with the pencil tool you draw the parts (for example you can draw a part long as all the song's intro, and call it "intro", another one long all the verse and call it "verse", then one for the chorus and so on...), and then you can "move" those arranger track segments (e.g. "the verse") from one point of the song to another, and it will move all the single track parts below it.

This is particularly useful when writing a song, right after we have laid down all the single parts: we can move verses, choruses etc from one part of the song to another, multiply them etc with great ease, until we find the "perfect sequence" that will represent the final structure of our song.

This method described so far can be considered the "linear" structuring method, but in some Daw (like the latest versions of Cubase) we can also playback our songs in a sequential way: from the arranger menu, we can create a sequence and decide how many times to repeat a certain part, so that our project gets played as a sequencer (for example we can set: 1 x Intro part, 2 x Verse Riff, 2 x Chorus part.... and so on), and save multiple "chains" for the different arrangements we need, always using the same recorded parts.

One last thing, that is instead a prerogative of the latest versions of Presonus Studio One, is the Scratch pad.

The Scratch pad is a sort of "sandbox", a separate part of our project in which we can copy our project or our arrangement, and start modifying it without risking to ruin our main project (this is particularly useful in huge, multi song projects with a lot of tracks): we can copy there the parts we need, modify them, and if we like what we created, we can paste it back in the "official" project, otherwise we can get rid of it without risking to damage anything important.

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How to use markers in our DAW (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to talk about a topic that is particularly important when mixing all songs in the same project (click here for a dedicated article), or during the mastering session, if we import all the tracks in the same mastering project: the marker track.

A marker track is a track that can hold markers, and these are used to locate specific places along the timeline of our daw project.
What does it mean?
It means, for example, that if we want to record 3 tracks in the same project we are going to add a tempo track (click here for a dedicated article), to tell the project that from a certain minute we need the metronome for example at 150, from another minute we need it at 200 and from another at 250, and then we can add a marker track to create 3 markers, one for the beginning of each song, so that we can move through them lightning fast.

So, once we have added a marker track in our project, how do we add these markers?
We set the cursor to any point we need to set a marker, and press the "add marker" button in the marker track: it will create a flag with a progressive number (1 for the first one, then 2, 3...), that we can move if we need, or rename it, for example in our case with the name of each one of the 3 songs in our project.

How do we move from one marker to another?
This varies from one daw to another: on Cubase there is a marker section in the transport bar, so we can choose them from there, in Studio One we can navigate through them with the skip controls, in other daws there is a vertical menu on the left sidebar with the list of the markers, but the concept is that somehow we have the ability of moving through them, and when we select one, the cursor will set at the marker's position.
This is very useful when mixing or mastering large projects, for example with 10 tracks, so that we can find easily the track we need, or we can use it to break down one single song among verse, bridge, chorus etc.


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Inserts in the FX channel (or "how to effect an effect")

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

This article must be intended as an appendix of our Fx channel track article.

As we have seen there is no need while mixing to load, for example, a reverb on each track we need to effect, first off because it's better to use a reverb with the same settings for all tracks to give the impression that all the instruments are played together in the same room at the same time, and also because good reverbs are very heavy on cpu.

How can we do it?
We can create an Fx Channel track, and feed it (via the SEND function) to the single tracks, so that we have a reverb for every track, and eventually another one specific for voice and/or guitar solos (or for other particular needs).

Now that we have our effect track ready, we might need some improvement on it, for example it may happen that just feeding the reverb on the snare track, it makes the snare too dark, too "80s".
In this case we could set an EQ in the insert of the fx track with a high pass filter up to 1khz, for example: this way the reverb will only work from 1khz up, and not affect the part of the sound below it.

This method of stacking processors in the same effect track may lead to some really creative use, for example we could add a compressor sidechained to the kick, so that it activates the reverb (or anything else) only when the kick is not playing.... The possibilities are really endless.
Please let us know your favourite fx sends inserts in the comments below!


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How to organize our vst library (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are covering a topic which is crucial especially when installing a new DAW, because once we have our vst folder already clogged in rubbish it becomes almost impossible to make order.

In order to improve greatly our workflow, we need to be able to find exactly the plugin we need very quickly, and in order to do this we need to keep our vst folder clean and organized.

If you are a mix engineer that likes to experiment and follows websites like this one you will probably have downloaded a million plugins, some free and some paid, to try them out (and then you forgot to uninstall them, even if you'll never use them), because often producers have somehow this sort of software bulimia that makes them amass huge amounts of plugins.
The result is that probably you will have your vst folder full of dodgy .dll downloaded from some vst repository in 1998 with a crack that doesn't even work with your latest version of windows, but you'll never know because you never run it.

Here's a few guidelines that will make your workflow faster, your hard disc cleaner and your vst scan much quicker:

1) Know every plugin that's in your vst folder: this is the toughest: if you have 500 plugins, you will hardly know 10% of them. The others were just downloaded because they were free for a short time, and you never actually tried them. Try to spend a hour into opening all of them and trying them out to see if they will EVER be of any use of if you already have better alternatives (in which case, go to point 2).

2) Delete what you know you will never use: this is crucial. We know you all are serial hoarders, but a daw each time it loads up makes a plugin scan, and the more rubbish we have in our vst folder, the more time it will take. Come on, you use always the same good eq plugin for each track, it makes no sense to have 40 free equalizers programmed in visual basic that you will never use.

3) Organize the plugins in folders: many Daws (like Cubase) creates voices in the insert menu named after the folders you put your plugins into, so it's a good idea, instead of letting your plugins roam free in your vst folder, to create themed folders (like "Guitar Amp Simulators", "Compressors", "Equalizers" and so on), in order to not clog completely your interface and lose time looking for that plugin you didn't remember the name....but it was somewhere....around page 9 of the menu....

4) Know your tools (in advance): this is connected to point 1, and it consists into choosing the best plugins you have and learn how to master them, not more than 1 or 2 for each task, for example one equalizer, one compressor, etc... You have no idea of how a mix can improve, only by using tools that we completely master under every aspect.

5) Watch out for compatibility: We often change computer, or Windows distribution, and just drag and drop the vst folder from one pc to another, forgetting that some plugin only works with 32 bit architectures, others only with 64 bit, some are compatible with Windows Xp but not with Windows 8, and some do the opposite. That's why is a good idea to load each one of them (as suggested in point 1) and see if it works, every time we change operating system, in order to avoid bad surprises right when we need something the most.


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Quad Tracking Guitars (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will talk about an interesting topic concerning guitar recording: quad tracking.

Quad tracking is a technique in which you layer four guitar takes doing the exact same thing in order to increase the wall of sound; this is particularly useful in genres in which the guitar player doesn't need to do particularly articulated riffs, like nu metal or metalcore, and in which the impact is the most important aspect.

There are situations in which this technique is not suggested, such as the bands in which the riffing is particularly fast and precise (therefore the result, unless the guitarists are exceptionally good, can be unpleasantly "hazy"), or when the sound is too crowded, for example when there's an orchestra, or many backing vocals part; this is a technique purely conceived for guitar oriented music in which the musicians wants to maximize the impact.

How to do it: there are many different solutions to try if we want to quad track a guitar part.
First off we need to record the part in four different takes, otherwise just taking one single take and copying it four times would only result in an increase of its volume, and we would lose the layering effect that creates the wall of sound.

Then we would need to spatially place the takes using the PAN knob:  we could put the external guitars pretty wide, for example 90% left and 90% right, and the other 2 closer, for example 50% left and 50% right, but there is no fixed rule: someone prefers to keep the internal ones a bit farther away (like 80%), someone else prefers to keep them a bit closer to the center (like 25%), it really depends on how crowded is the centre of your mix.

Now it's time to listen to the four tracks playing together: are we satisfied of the result? Or maybe now the guitar wall of sound is too predominant in the mix?
If the latter we must obviously lower the volume until it's perfectly balanced, but we can also try to equalize our guitars differently, in a creative way: we could for example try to retain some of the low end in the tracks closer to the center and try to focus the more external tracks on the mids and highs: this could bring the mix to a less dense guitar parts, mantaining the layering effect typical of the quad tracking.

Another technique to make the sound fuller is to use an amp (or amp simulator) for the most external tracks and a different one for the internal ones.

Do you have other interesting quad tracking tips? Let us know in the comment section!


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Guitar and bass Tuners! All the different types (with a free one inside!).

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we will talk about a topic that is often overlooked:
Guitar and bass tuners!

A tuner is a device that takes the sound of our strings and determines the pitch, and then tells us what note it is, or how to adjust the tuning until we reach exactly the note we need.
Unless we have an absolute ear that lets us determine with perfect precision what note is our string and how to correct it, we absolutely need a tuner.

There are different types of tuner, but they all do the same job: help us in finding the right pitch for our strings. Let's check them out:

- Compact tuners: these are the most common, and can be both digital (like this one depicted above), or analog (like the one in the picture on top). They can usually receive the sound via jack input, or with an in-built microphone (this one is used to tune acoustic instruments).

- Clip Tuners: these gets attached to the guitar headstock with a clip, and they determine the pitch of the string played using the vibrations on the wood. This is the most compact and lightweight tuner of all, but sometimes it is a bit less accurate than the others, imho.

- Acoustic guitar in built tuner: many recent acoustic guitars feature a small tuner built within the body itself of the guitar, and it is usually paired with a pickup that lets us plug the acoustic guitar into an amp with a jack.

- Stompbox tuner: one of the most classic tuners of all, this one lets us mute the guitar while tuning on stage and it's particularly bright to be seen also in dim light conditions. The best ones are "true bypass", which means that doesn't deteriorate the guitar signal passing through them.

- Vst tuners: today many daw offer a vst tuner, in order to tune our instruments plugged into the audio interface. You can download for example GVST GTune, a good free vst tuner (with also the Hertz calibration, so that if you don't want to tune with the A at 440hz you can modify it, for example at 432hz).

These are the most used technologies so far.
Lately there have been attempt of simplifying the tuning system, but not always they turned out to be succesful:

Gibson experimented the Les Paul Robot, a guitar that can tune iself due to motorized locking tuners, but it didn't have much success due to its extremely high price and the fact that the technology was very fragile, and Peavey presented the Peavey AT serie, that uses a form of Autotune in order to digitally correct the tuning of the strings. 

The downside of this technology is the fact that the strings actually remains out of tune, only the output pitch is digitally corrected, therefore the result is that after a while the string will have, even if it sounds in tune, a weird tension.

Our hope is, looking at it by a real utility point of view, that someday every amp will have a small in built tuner, because that would be really useful and make the guitar and bass player's life easier.


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