II. Signal Clipping

Like any digital device, if you try to amplify the digital signal too much, you'll push the amplitude larger than the device can handle, and it will result in digital clipping. The basic point is that you can't turn your amp, mixer, and every effect in your chain to output as large a signal as possible and expect it to sound good.

However, this is deceptive. Even if you don't max out the signal, you can still get effect clipping, which is covered in the next section. The only volume knob/control I recommend setting anywhere close to maximum is the MASTER knob - I believe this is an analog signal amplification occurring after all digital processing, thus not subject to digital signal clipping. ALL others are digital and subject to clipping.

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III. Effects Clipping

Some of the effects on the Pod seem to have modeled clipping into them. The most notorious from my experience is the Parametric EQ effect. I often run these after my amp/cab and mixer in the chain. If I had the amp volume or mixer settings turned up a bit, I'd find there was clipping in my signal. If I turned off the EQ effect, all the sudden the tone cleaned up, even with the same volume levels, far lower than clipping the device itself or even different effects. I now have a relatively surefire method to prevent effect clipping, while still getting strong output levels.

Keep all your volumes conservative until the end of your patch, where you do a clean boost to bring the volume up to the desired level. This means I keep the Ch. Vol/VOLUME knob around or lower than 50%, and I place EQ's that cut before the ones that boost. I try to keep other effects, like compressors, to have unity gain rather than boost the signal.

My preferred way to get the clean boost at the end is a Mid-Focus EQ. Its Gain parameter does not relate to how much EQ'ing you get, only the final output level. Same thing for the Studio EQ. I generally use a Mid-Focus EQ on nearly all of my patches, though, so it's commonly also used to set my final patch volume.

The other way doesn't require an EQ effect to give me a clean boost. I just put EVERYTHING in Channel A, so that the mixer is the last piece of my signal chain, and I use the mixer levels to boost the volume to where I want it. This is an effective method, but it is no good for dual amp patches. Since I routinely use dual cabs, I rarely use this method.

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IV. Clipping external devices

If you send too hot of a signal out the Effects Loop or analog outputs (XLR, 1/4"), you can clip external devices. If you find you are clipping an external device, try flipping the line/amp switch on the device to amp or reducing the Master knob. Generally, I use "line"; line-level effects should be able to handle such. Also, it is the preferred setting if you are running into a real amp's effects loop return (also known as power amp in). Also, you can configure the Pod's FX Loop send/receive levels if that's where you're sending too much juice.

With my patch volumes, I can't run the Master knob at full blast into my Spider Valve Mk I combo, or I get a nasty distorted sound. I find I have to turn it down to about 60-70% to dial that out. Switching to "amp" with Master knob at 100% produces less volume, so I prefer to still use "line" but turn down my Master knob.

If you are running into the front guitar input of an amp, you should set line/amp to amp and be very careful of how high you set the Master knob.

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