Analogman King of Tone / Blues Breaker

Plugins Plugin Requests
#26

It is not. Open source is no pejorative, but just copying the code of others and packaging as your own product is.

And LV2 is a format. Where in the bloody hell is there a limitation for the LV2 format? MODs option of hosting LV2 plugins only is one thing. Nothing prevents anyone form coding a mammoth plugin and porting it over to LV2. It’s just that many companies don’t. And they’re not happy that, for ProTools compatibility alone, they need to port their plugins to 3 (yes, three!) different formats.

Also, a free plugin does not have to be open source. It is free as in “devoid of monetary price”. Open source is free as in “freedom” – anyone can look inside and see how it works. Depending on the license under which it is published, you have to make your sub-product (using open source libraries) also open source, but some licenses do not require that. You’d be surprised at how many things you use and pay for that are based on open source software. (Start with your Android phone, if you have one)

For those interested:

What is open source?

What is LV2?

Which I believe to be the reason why your Dwarf lived in your house far less than you have adorned this forum with your thoughts about it.

The only experience I have with “coding” guitar effects was with the Jesusonic, back in 2005 or so. You’d be surprised that with 10 lines of code you can get a distortion. But it probably takes 2000 to get a good distortion.

Do you believe every one of the 1000s of effects some products offer have each 2000 lines of code?

Read Sound on Sound’s evaluation of the Boss GT1000, and you’ll see that, while they praise the amp models and “realistic” experience, they also say amp emulations are few and not very tweakable. And that is a product from a major company in the business, with 70M in annual sales.

4 Likes
#27

that is exactly what I’m doing and besides some minor issues its really working great. Don’t get me wrong: there are great tones with minimum effort you can dial in - especially with cleans and low gain. Not to promote myself but just have a look at my pedalboard.

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#28

Exactly my own take.

I needed a clean setup for neck pickup in a semi-hollow. Brought the Supersonic, a cabsim and the Shiroverb and – voilà!! It was the first time I could recreate the Guitar Amp Pro setup I used with Logic Pro 7 years ago. It sounded immensely better to my ear than Amplitube and Guitar Rig together!!

If I may be pictorial about it: :sunny: :star: :confetti_ball: :tada: :trophy: :high_brightness: :exclamation:

Great video, @spunktsch!

3 Likes
#29

Good that you pumped up this posting.
Very economical but with a good blues sond.
Thanks for it.

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#30

First of all thanks for the nice perspective. And I want to assure you that we are here - MOD team and community - to help you with any tips or barriers you may found.

Indeed, admittedly it’s not the easiest device/platform to turn on and have hours of fun without any previous setup. We have been putting a lot of thought and work into it for the last couple of weeks so we can improve this onboarding process.
Personally, I would say that is great for tinkering and getting creative with your sound (meaning, going a bit out of the clichê guitar sound).

I hope you have fun :slight_smile:

#31

This is not self promotion. It’s actually a really great example and a really nice starting point @guitarsandvideogames.
@spunktsch has here a great pedalboard making use of a lot of the “special things” available on the MOD platform and to add on top is a super well documented and explained pedalboard!

#32

@guitarsandvideogames
At this stage you should be excited!
I know I was and I still am.
You might be missing the opportunities here.

If you are willing to invest that bit of time to learn how it works, how you keep track of gain levels and how to work the dials to make it work for you, you’ll come to some good primers for yourself to build upon. Once I had found my favourite free online IR’s for cabinets for example, things started to come together. If you feel like experimenting, There aren’t much worthy competitors though. If you’re looking for a real multitool and not just a multi-effect, you won’t regret it!

I hope a story like mine puts in some weight on the positive side: I’m selling my Wampler pedals and my Strymon Flint because they became idle since I have the dwarf. I downsized my rig significantly. I’m now experimenting with vocals and acoustic guitar, I’ll be buying a midi keyboard because it has proven itself als a wicked midi machine as well.

In my Dwarf journal you can follow my journey and how I discovered, in baby steps, to use it both in front of an amp and as end-to-end system. How it servers my heavy metal and acoustic needs, How easy it is to line up files and create a backing track machine for rehearsals without drummer. How I record both dry and wet signals of my ideas. that way, you can keep both and re-amp. I record ideas or the band and @brummer already showed interest to work on a mutitrack recorder. (he already has a recorder plugin that you can link anywhere in your chain.

If you are absolutely NOT creative, there is always this excellent community that will be eager to help.
Run into a bug? post it on this board! Last time I posted something, it was fixed in a next release.
MOD might not be the big multinational but they listen to their community.

I came in here as a singing guitarist and learned a lot while I already contributed from day 1 myself.

Try the online MOD sandbox.
https://sandbox.moddevices.com/
you can use the file player to play a dry DI guitar signal, preloaded in there.
build a chain, hear in real time how it works.

2 Likes
#33

Thank you so much for the nice words @LievenDV.
Certainly, the platform and the devices are not perfect and a lot can be improved.
You already pointed out many of those points in an educated, friendly and constructive way. We can’t be anything but thankful for that.
After all, no one and no device, platform, ecosystem, or anything are perfect.

That said - and taking this great opportunity :stuck_out_tongue: - this link is not the current one (I’m not even sure if it works). @guitarsandvideogames use try.moddevices.com

I’m sorry @LievenDV, I really needed to do this :sweat_smile: :heart:
Thank you so much for the great supporter that you are :wink:

EDIT: It actually does work (go ahead and troll me as well, I deserve it :stuck_out_tongue: ), although I guess it shouldn’t. The “official” one is try.moddevices.com

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#34

Ok Team , its here and plugged in, I am going to default it and start from scratch. Previous User was a Kicker starter Mod user #66 so good on him.

STAND BY

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#35

Can’t you see I’m gradually working towards becomes local respresentative or something? :wink:

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#36

I wholeheartedly recommend @LievenDV’s journal to anyone trying to get acquaited with MOD products. It’s thorough and realistic (in the sense that it shows pros and cons with equal fairness).

Ditto.

We all here have some needs and may still rely in outboard gear for a number of tasks. But as Mod evolves, we may replace some of it if we get the results we need. For instance, if my upcoming tests with the SF2 player work out fine, goodbye to my Boss GP10. (And it looks like Sfizz may come to Mod.)

No, you da man! BTW, where’s Elk’s music? Get to work, man!!

The Poly units and Empress Zoia are also loved and hated in equal measures. Great and powerful machines, but it takes a while to get something useful from them. I prefer MOD over both because of the interface. Programming the Zoia is a nightmare.

Now the Quad Cortex is certainly a beast, in spite of the heavy criticism it’s facing.

We’re eagerly waiting, hoping that the Army of Doom did not kill your hope for a brighter day.

Very few times in my life I plugged a piece of gear and said WOW right away. I can remember this happened with the Victoria 20112 amp, which is actually a Fender Tweed – the loved 5e3 circuit that is freely available for anyone to build (the patent lapsed). Also the TC Electronic Nova. And the Yamaha Magicstomp, of course. Love at first chord.

So if the MOD in your first audition doesn’t sound like heaven, don’t let the eerie clouds surrounding the sinister bearer of dreadful news engulf you. Keep your head up and trust your own judgment. I did get a nice result (the one I posted above) within a relatively short time frame, but it was not immediate. My first amp and cab combo did not please me at all.

Shiroverb, on the other hand, was the MagicStomp of MOD. Just delicious!

You have my vote! :smiley:

5 Likes
#37

Day 1 was bad
Day 2 was angry
Day 3 Posted for sale.

You are created a device that is in no may to have Headphones plugged in. my ears are completed FKD and I just went from one pedalbaord to the next , The headphone volume in menus does absolutley nothing to protect the user. If some guys pins outputs and uploads and doesnt warn anyone the outcome is me shivering to my 10 yearold that I think my ear is bleeding.

Thanks for the effort but not for me. What a nightmare of connectivity.

#38

You have the posibility to change the volume of the headphones independently, if you haven’t checked that. Maybe you have it too loud?

#39

Eh, what? LV2 is not “for Linux-based systems”, it works on windows, macos, freebsd, haiku, etc. and it certainly is an opensource plugin format.

Compared to other formats like AAX and AU which are by definition closed formats, LV2 is liberally licensed and can be extended by anyone (which is how MOD was able to extend it with their own custom GUI, something that is not possible with other plugin formats).

Please don’t spread misinformation like this.

1 Like
#40

Thanks for correcting my post, @dreamer.

I should have said “ALSO for Linux-based systems” or not mentioned OS at all.

My point is that LV2 was a format, not an “inherent limitation” of any kind, which I believe the rest of my post tries to describe in more detail.

The other portion of the phrase – which I agree was badly written – refers to the fact that a LV2 plugin in itself does not need to be made either free or open source, even if based in an open source format. I have rewritten it as well.

And whereas OSX and Windows (as well as the others you mention) can run LV2 plugins, support is still scarce for OSX for instance – it was added to Reaper just last year and is still limited.

I believe I said something previously in the post regarding my zero knowledge of programming plugins. It would have told you that I am possibly not the best person to explain their formats. I accept and thank you for your corrections.

However, phrasing it as

is extremely rude. I don’t think I’m known as a spreader of misinformation in this forum. I am a librarian, I know what misinformation is and what it does. The help of knowleadgeble people like you is welcome, but stepping on others hardly ever does any good.

1 Like
#41

It is very commonly said that “LV2 is for Linux” so yes this is misinformation. I don’t know how else to describe it.
Not meant to be rude at all, but it’s not nice to see bad information be spread around as if it’s some sort of truth.

#42

While some where debating semantics we have a new user who had a terrible experience.

@guitarsandvideogames that sounds like a hot mess! :confused:

The Dwarf is a flexible toolbox but there still are a few rough edges.
The MOD guys are aware of the most of them and try to apply the best adaption to improve the experience but that’s hard to achieve overnight. The more users, the more specific use cases to “waterproof”

There is no protection or warning on the output right now and you probably had some high high level signals being routed to the outputs. It’s a universal good practice to set volumes low but that isn’ a real excuse for dangerously high level blasting through your headphones right away.

A blank pedalboard has a gain control right away, on the right side, mostly for this purpose.

I my journal you will read that it wasn’t all 'Apple style plug n play" right away but I write it for exactly that purpose: passing on user experiences in order to improve.

Why not leaving it in its box for a few days and start over fresh?
(and simple; I found I had vairous levels coming out of the Dwarf when trying out other peoples outputs. There is no kind of unified output stage or “level learning” (yet) so why not start out simple yourself, with a gain plugin in the end, keeping it down to boot off and gradually opening it up.

concerning the connection:
I had some connection issues at first but it was solved thanks to this tip:
There are some steps in Troubleshooting - MOD Wiki for when things do not go right in Windows.
The most typical scenario is Windows assuming it is a parallel communication device, rather than an ethernet communication device.

Alternatively, you can switch the USB mode in the Dwarf device settings from “USB Net” to “USB Net + MIDI (Windows)” which contains a special mode known to work in Windows 10 (and as an extra, the Dwarf then acts as a USB MIDI device)

5 Likes
#43

Well, @LievenDV already said what’s to be said. You may give it some time still and see what it does for you, other than ripping your timpani apart. Have in mind that the impedance of your phones may have had an effect on the result.

Unfortunately, manuals/guides for the Dwarf are still lacking more thorough information, but as @jesusperezsv mentioned, you can control the output level independently (such is the case with the Mod X).

And just FYI, what you experienced with output levels is the EXACT same thing that happened to me with the Digitech GNX4 many years ago. Not all multi-effect units have an output “normaliser” of some kind to keep all levels the same.

But, in the name of good semantics, you already said it’s up for sale, so in any event, good luck for you.

3 Likes
#44

I understand where you’re coming from, @dreamer. It is a topic that probably speaks highly to you, and you wanted to set it straight. You have a point there.

It was an honest mistake and bad phrasing on my end, which I corrected and apologised for twice. You say yourself that there it’s “very commonly said” LV2 is linked to Linux. So this general misconception must indeed be clarified. And so is the case with the word misinformation.

No, this is not “misinformation”. Start with the Oxford:

I can’t see where was the intent to deceive anyone.

Use your own words “bad information”. Or else:

  • inaccurate information;
  • general misconception;
  • uninformed idea.
  • etc.

I had a firearm pointed to my head for the 5th time in my life just yesterday. As I was helping with translation for the people processing Ukrainian refugees in my town, someone started yelling on the street. I was asked to deescalate things and there came a gun and an ominous advice for me to stop aiding Nazi terrorists (79 women and 30 children). It took me 40 minutes to talk that person out of doing that, only to learn that he read somewhere in the internet that these “so-called refugees” were terrorists in disguise.

Last year, my mother, upon returning home from my father’s funeral was accosted by a neighbour accusing her of killing her beloved husband by allowing him to be vaccinated against Covid.

THIS is what misinformation does.

I can’t see what damage I could have done to the world by saying LV2 is for Linux-based systems, still I corrected it and acknowledged my mistake, thanking you for your help.

4 Likes
#45

As I understood reading your posts you bought the device second hand.
From that starting point, is the device updated on the last OS version and the plugins also on their last version?
If I remember well, when we first start shipping the MOD Dwarf to crowdfunding backers, we quickly spotted an issue with certain plugins volumes (way louder than others) and also some plugins that were simply cutting the sound.
I don’t remember exactly in which release or either if it happened on a OS level update or plugins updates, but I believe that was solved.
Wasn’t this the case on your device?

6 Likes