I started off with @spunktsch but it was pushing the Dwarf to nearly 100% so I threw almost everything out. Tested it on my Blues Deluxe just to get a sound going but will test later on this pc with prerecorded samples and an IR cab.
Made a split setup:
A: The Centaur-Mutant pairing @spunktsch
B: The MetalTone (courtesy of @brummer) in front of the Mutant.
Applied some EQ on both.
my conclusion: both setups had their own specific quality and usability and most of all:
YES, IT DOES HEAVY METAL!
This amp is such a leap forward for me, I’m excited about this one!
Especially since I dind’t have to do much to get something good goign on, and that’s always a good sign. I will be building a new board like this, A/B testing it while adding my vocal chain to it for channel 2. (being able to save parts of chains would help these kinds of workflows but the MOD teams already know that of course, right @jon? :D)
Next step: a new step in my journal; taking he new power supply and a new board (based around the Mutant) to the rehearsal room to use it for the band rehearsal. only 2 rehearsals to go until a new gig so I need to be ready and better than the first time!
This is not so much on @Jan plate, but is something that we have been discussing quite a lot. Right now we are not using the marketing (or lack of it) to hold on releases. The truth is that we are with really few resources for marketing and then this things need to be asynchronous.
What we plan is to dedicate concentrated marketing efforts on different things from the platform. You saw a glance of it recently on the CV plugins with the Guitar Synth releases.
What you are suggesting is exactly where we want to go. Hopefully we will get there.
made a first test board with a sample.
No button assignments or anything, just messing around putting a MetalTone BEHIND the Mutant and applying a Calf limiter (beta)
Noticed that this board hogs processor power; I think a lot goes to the Mutant.
I still love the mutant, especially with a MetalTone behind it.
THOUGH
It seems to be hogging processor power on the Dwarf and I can’t incorporate it in my board together with the other stuff I need without maxing out on the cpu and getting artifacts
I had to go to a @brummer Frog->into ->MetalTone combo instead which sounds great too.
(which works better for me than the intuitive pedal in front of the amp. That didn’t work too well for me but switching them around worked great!)
Hi! I tested quite extensively the Mutant in past weeks and I think it is the best amp in the store so far. Great job @Jan !!!
Unfortunately I think it has a two little bugs in volume management.
Bug 1: When you load the pedalboard, 1.CRUNCH is selected and the the volume is very high. The scene does not use the drive channel. Then if you select a scene with drive channel on, let’s say 4.LEAD, the volume goes at normal level and the initial issue disappears.
Bug 2: When I move from 4.LEAD to 5.CLEAN or 8.CHORUS there’s a nasty volume spike. I’ve already experienced this kind of problem with other amps and I don’t know if it is strictly related to Mutant or to MOD platform in general.
Here’s my under testing pedalboard.
I’d like to know from Duo X users what’s the CPU usage on their side. On Dwarf is around 70-78% with buffer size 256.
When changing presets here I don’t have any odd behavior regarding volumes, I also tried snapshots and those behave fine too.
I also tried your pedalboard and cant seem reproduce bug 1, regarding bug 2, I can hear a bit of a spike but I don’t think the Mutant is fully to blame here, as there are a lot of plugins being toggled at once. One tip I can give is to start using the Drive volume parameter to adjust for volume when the drive channel is enabled instead of making big changes on the main volume per snapshot.
also regarding cpu usage, on my Dwarf at a 128 buffer size just the Mutant and an audio file player run at 36% with no Drive and 44% with Drive. (just to give a comparison the cabsims run at ± 39%). on the DuoX it runs at 18% with no Drive and 24% with Drive.
Your pedalboard runs at 58% at 128 here btw on a DuoX
EDIT: Solved. Was caused by “dead” user presets I was unable to delete from Mutant user preset list. Somehow they were conflicting with snapshot settings.
It seems that the spike it’s caused by Mutant. I’ll try to mitigate the volume jump somehow but in other situations I would have pre/gain stages fixed (because it would change also saturation) and prefer to have different output volume. Maybe with a “morph” behavior (like I’ve already talked in other thread) spikes could be avoided.
hmm so the first one is really odd to me as I cant reproduce it, and the signal level is always the same for each snapshot. It would be good to know if this happens to more people in different setups
regarding the second one, there is actually already some “morphing” happening behind the scenes for each parameter, however there is a trade-off between responsiveness and artifices. It gets tricky as snapshots are supposed to be instant, and (right now at least) a plugin cant know the difference between a parameter or a snapshot change. Also, afaik the order in parameters changed when loading a snapshot is ‘random’ so when a volume knob gets “morphed” and a drive stage gets toggled, the order can influence how things react at certain samples.
ps, the drive volume parameter doesn’t change anything in terms of saturation, its there for exactly this purpose to avoid big changes on the master volumes
I’ve tested the mutant mimicking your settings and notice that it exists a big volume jump ( 34 dB ) between the clean sound and drive sound so I imagine that it is expected that this change can be heard when abruptly changing from one snapshot to another.
Nothing was connected on the input of the device so the level meter plugin is showing only the device noise level.
I´m not sure if my settings here are in line with your setup though.
If you are on the Dwarf I know that device has a noise gate at the input and a compressor at the output, so the fact that you are hearing a spike could be related to these settings. I Hope this help you troubleshoot the problem.
The yellow vertical line is the sample start
The red lines are the CLEAN snapshot
The green lines are the LEAD snapshot
You can see that there are some spikes on the yellow line caused by the audio player looping the sample.
The thing to notice here is the blue rectangle. When changing from LEAD to CLEAN, a 2-steps spike happens: a first huge spike followed by a lower step then followed by normal CLEAN level.
I have builtin noise gate level at minimum (-70 db) and no builtin compressor active. Also ground loop compensation is off.
Thanks a lot! This looks less evident than my case anyway. Could you share the waveform?
Just noticed that also something messy is happening with the Mutant user presets. I was unable to delete some of them I created in past days and I noticed that when switching from CLEAN to LEAD snapshot, all the knobs were moving in a fraction of a second then moving to right position. This would explain the A(-10)…B(+10…0…-20)…A(-10)…B(+10…0…-20)…A(-10)…B(+10…0…-20)… behavior.
Rebooted the Dwarf and then I was able to remove the presets. Now the glitch is barely audible. Maybe user preset management is broken for Mutant?
Is there a way to automatically clean snapshots.json file in order to remove all the referencer to presets and plugins that do not belong to the pedalboard? Don’t know why but I see references to stuff that are not present in my pedalboard
