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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 01 2016, @05:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the every-kickstarter-project-should-impress-like-this dept.

Jono Bacon reports via OpenSource.com

It runs Linux, uses JACK, and the plugin standard used is LV2

Some time ago, the MOD Duo jumped onto my radar. In a nutshell, it is a guitar stomp box that comes loaded with different effects and sounds. Instead of buying the multitude of guitar pedals that many musicians string together in complex, if somewhat beautiful ways, the MOD Duo negates all that. It is a single box and what's more, it is powered by open source.

Now, when I say it is powered by open source, I don't just mean it runs Linux, but we will get to that a little later.

[...] Inside the beefy-looking steel enclosure is a computer that is loaded with software for generating lots of different guitar effects and sounds. This includes delays, reverbs, choruses, flangers, and more. When you plug this thing into you computer, you can then use a web interface to build your own virtual pedalboard:

Just like a physical pedalboard, you drag the different virtual stomp boxes onto the floor and use cables to connect them together in different ways.

When you have created your sounds, the MOD Duo will save them and you can call them directly from the hardware unit. This means you don't need a computer to use the MOD Duo to play gigs; you only use the computer to configure your pedalboards.

The interface is not just used for creating sounds, though. You can also browse additional virtual pedals and download them, and create banks of patches.

[...] For many years you have been able to plug a USB sound card into a Linux computer, set up JACK, configure your plugins, and output the audio in different ways. Although possible, this was historically complicated to set up and use.

[...] The MOD Duo changed all this. First, everything is set up and good to go on the device itself. You literally don't need to know jack about JACK. Second, the plugins have completely refreshed and simplified interfaces that look and feel like guitar pedals. Third, the overall interface for stringing these different effects together is simple, natural, and a lot of fun. For the geeks they even go so far as to offer a MOD Arduino Shield for experimenting with different sensors and a MOD software development kit.

[...] Aside from all the technical merits of the MOD Duo from an open source perspective, I also love how the team is working in this very community-oriented way. Once again, the real power of open source is not code, it is the community fabric and methodology that underpins it.


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  • (Score: 1) by mattwrock on Tuesday November 01 2016, @01:51PM

    by mattwrock (3835) on Tuesday November 01 2016, @01:51PM (#421245)

    This sounds like an open source version of Line 6. I have been using their equipment for almost 10 years, and it's the bomb! You can get any tone and effect you want, of course for a fee. I don't know if I would switch, as once you get "YOUR" sound, you don't want to mess with it.

    --
    Ones and zeros everywhere... I even saw a 2 - Bender
  • (Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday November 01 2016, @02:57PM

    by Rich (945) on Tuesday November 01 2016, @02:57PM (#421264) Journal

    The 500-bucks price point matches that of the Line 6 Pod HD 500 (X). I own one of those (non-X) and think it's pretty damn amazing and its only drawback is a slight lack of computing power (which the X supposedly delivers) when tinkering with both sides of the split output of a Rickenbacker bass. The JCM800-simulation is spectacular.

    This new widget is a lot smaller than the big Pods, exposing its features more like the little plastic xoom (have a b1on, decent) and DigiTech (had an RP-50 (?), which totally sucked) thingies, which cost a tenth. So, as much as I appreciate the difficulty of small quantity deployments, at the end of the day it has to compete, and in a marked being braced by mentioned devices, it's unique selling point seems to be that it is free-software driven. So it will mainly appeal to all the guitarists who already use a Yeloong Lemote computer for freedom's sake. And of course those DSP-hackers who want to go live with their development and have little overhead (like a laptop with a breakout box would be).

    An interesting development in that scene, however, is what's being sparked by the Kemper amps. (Executive summary: Kemper are the guys of Access virtual synthesizer fame and seem to have some serious resident DSP deity(/ies). These guys hacked up convolution algorithms that can not only reproduce any impulse response (e.g. they profile real amplifier behaviour) but also sound good while doing so.). I've not yet had my hands on one, but every guitarist I talk to is totally raving about them. Naturally, the competition wants a piece of the cake too, because there's a grand more of margin in that new market. Line 6 introduced the Helix series and hypes them right to that price point, but to my understanding they fall right short of the main Kemper tricks.

    If the MOD people get into this area (e.g. by commissioning a dissertation), deliver the profiling free-as-in-beer, and are reasonably good at it, they might have something entirely different on their hands.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @06:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @06:36PM (#421344)

    I second this. I bought one of their 75w modeling amps last year, and it's been a lot of fun.