First topic, what about the MOD Duo?

It’s a cool device, but the xruns I get with it are a real showstopper. The patch I use right now only uses ca. 50% cpu, so it should really be fine, no?

1 Like

I am really digging my Mod Duo. I think there is some work to be done, but every update fills in different gaps and makes it better and better.

I think what is central to our success is a powerful, engaged community, so delighted to see the forum up and running! :slight_smile:

xruns is something we’re still working to fix and should have it resolved soon. @falkTX can comment a little bit more on that…

I’m absolutely loving it. The recent system updates have fixed the audio issues I had in earlier releases. I’ve played it in three gigs so far and it has worked perfectly. My effects are very simple (boost -> overdrive -> delay -> reverb) but it has handily replaced my Marshall Guv’nor and Boss DD6 pedals and it improves on my gigging amp’s (ZT Club) crunch and reverb sounds. It sounds even better through the clean channel on my AC30 (but I hate hauling that beast to gigs).

I haven’t needed it thus far but it’s nice that disconnecting the power switches on true bypass so I can quickly switch to a direct amp sound in case anything goes awry.

Ideally it will also replace my Polytune pedal, but I have a hard time imagining any tuner plugin being as good as that pedal. (Yes, that’s a challenge :slight_smile:

Can’t wait to start hacking on plugins. I’m waiting for a Mac-compatible toolchain for now.

2 Likes

We have people working on it Florian. It is related to the kernel rt-patch and there were some agenda issues to book some time with the people who can do it.
But it is coming this month :wink:

Awesome, I would have loved to try and debug it a little myself, but I must admit that I was too lazy to try and get a GCC toolchain up and running.

It’s great! For my band, I’m using a guitar and a synth and now I can just switch between settings and pedalboards without limits and without switching jacks and that kind of stuff.
It’s saved me a backache already! :smiley:

2 Likes

There is something for this published already.
@falkTX can give more info

I talked about the MOD Duo on some forums (I love fuzz, and some french forums too).
Most of the time, people are interested, but are waiting for a few things :

  1. demos
  2. precisions about the latency

So, anyone here who would make a demo ? That could bring more people around that project !
Also, what about the latency ? :relieved:

So, anyone here who would make a demo ?

MOD has produced a lot of demos here: https://vimeo.com/moddevices/videos
Maybe one of those will help?

1 Like

I’d like to hear some more demos also. The stuff on the Vimeo site doesn’t do enough to convince me to drop the coin on the pedal. I love the idea but unless it sounds good I’m still undecided.

I got my MOD Duo a few days ago and had not so much time for testing… but I’d like to share my first impressions.

I’m a semi-professional guitar player, mainly playing 80s/90s Heavy Metal and Thrash Metal. During the last 28 years I used * a lot * of equipment: small and cheap transistor combos, average hybrid amps, high quality tube amps (Marshall, Soldano, Engl, Peavey, Mesa Boogie, …), digital amp simulations (POD HD, Zoom, …) and countless effects devices of all kinds.
Currently I use a Kemper Amp, which is the reference regarding my tests of the MOD Duo - and a really tough competition.

Except the Kemper Amp I use the following equipmet for the comparison:

  • Peavey Wolfgang with Doug Aldrich Bridge humbucker​
  • Matrix GT1000FX power amp
  • two Engl 2x12" cabinets, each with one Celestion Classic Lead 80 and one Celestion Vintage 30
  • high quality cables (Sommer Spirit XXL)
  • high quality plugs (Neutrik)

The Kemper Amp reference profile was a “Soldano SLO100” made by “SinMix”, a quite high gain profile I use as my general rhythm sound. The sound is similar to rhythm guitar sounds of the bands “Overkill” or “Exodus”: very much gain, but always with a well defined “punch” and a slight portion of the clean signal.
For the MOD Duo I kept the signal chain simple: guitar -> input 1 -> noise gate plugin -> guitarix amp simulation plugin (cab sim off) -> noise gate plugin -> output 1 -> power amp -> cabs

As the Kemper sounds totally awesome my goal is to get almost the same sound from the MOD Duo.

First I set up the input gain settings: the Doug Aldrich humbucker has a very high output, I had to set “Low” and “-9 dB”, so the input LED only very seldom turns red.
Then tried to find a basic guitarix amp simulation that came closest to the Kemper reference: finally I chose the “SOL 100”, “Peavey” might have been another good option.

Finding the gain settings took a long time (more than 30 minutes), with almost maximum for “pregain”, about 70% “distortion” and about 50% “drive” it’s not perfect, but it’s ok now and on the right way.
For the equalizer I startet with a neutral setting (bass, mids and treble 50%, presence 0%). The default presence settings seem to be fine, so I didn’t change them. The hights were a little bit sharp, I fixed this by reducing treble a bit. More problems I had with the mids and the low frequencies: there seems to be a “peak” in the upper mids somewhere between 2 and 5 kHz that hurts my ears. With the mids settings I was not able to fix this, when I lowered the settings until these frequencies were ok, something else was missing. For the low frequencies I missed “that punch”, even when turning bass up to maximum.

The next days I will set up a measurement microphone with an analyzer and find out the problem frequencies. I think most frequency problems might be solved by using an parametric equalizer plugin after guitarix.

If I reach at least 90% of the sound quality of the Kemper I’ll be pleased… I think this needs a lot of tweaking, but can be done with the MOD Duo.

My next steps after finding the “basic and perfect rhythm sound” will be creating a solo and some special effects sound (all based on the rhythm sound).
Then I will try to find a good speaker cabinet simulation, so I can use one output of the MOD Duo for the power amp and guitar cabinet, the other output for sending the signal to the mixer/FOH.
At last I will try to set up MIDI to use a standard MIDI footswich (e.g. BOSS FC-50) and an MIDI expression pedal to switch between the sounds and to control a wha pedal simulation.

4 Likes

Interesting ! And… What about the latency ? Do you “feel” a difference between the kemper and the mod duo regarding that point in particular ? I know it’s hard to tell because we’re talking about milliseconds, but yet, many are asking about it, and I’d like to reassure them :blush:

I’m pretty sure the latency depends a lot on the actual plugins in the patch. I don’t feel any latency with my standard overdrive-delay-reverb patch, but a patch that has an octave doubler has a small but noticeable lag (I’d guess maybe 20-40 ms). A lag on that level isn’t problematic (it’s the same as standing ~10 meters away from your amp).

Hi Daniel,

I’ve replied to your question about latency in a new topic - see the link to the right of your comment :slight_smile:
Cheers, -Harry

Hey @fps
Release 0.15 should have sorted the xruns out.
Did you try it out?

@gianfranco Yes, it works fine :slight_smile: Used the MOD to gig already :slight_smile:

1 Like

Awesome!!!
From a coder’s POV what we did was ugly and nasty :slight_smile:
But from the musicians perspective though it is all good as it sorts the problem.
when we switch to mainline it will be even better :wink:

1 Like

The bug is fixed, there’s no ugliness in that!

1 Like

I agree.
Also, the sunxi kernel is already ugly by itself…