DigiTech iPB-10 Programmable Pedalboard

[DigiTechRep]

The amp models in the iPB-10 are movable, you can have the AmpLoop send anywhere in the chain. The AmpLoop is also footswitchable.

[mck]

Ok. I'm sorry to report that the hard crashes are still there after a full reset on the iPad. I completed a factory reset on my iPad and installed only ipb-Nexus. This is an ipad running the latest IOS 5.1. The ipb-10 is running the updated 1.8 firmware.

I start the app and it goes through the initial synch with the floor unit. I then start to listen to the presets. Play each one for a while and then I go to the next one. I use a mix of stomp switches and the iPad buttons to change from patch to patch and bank to bank. Eventually, usually after 10 patch changes or so my ipad crashes out to the home screen. ipb-10 retains the last patch that was chosen and continues to operate as before. When I restart the app on iPad there is a little blink on the ipb-10 lights and for a moment the output gets interrupted but then all goes back to normal with the same patch in effect.

Hope this helps troubleshoot the issue. Thanks

[DigiTechRep]

Is it an iPad 1 or 2? It also sounds as if it happens after you cycle through a bunch of Setups, is that correct?

[mck]

iPad 1 32 GB. Fresh reset as if its out of the box. Go through bare minimum setup to reach usable state. No itunes content etc loaded. Just initialized with my iTunes account and then loaded ipb-Nexus. So as clean as it gets as a test subject. Running IOS 5.1. Thanks much for your help. Best Regards

[DigiTechRep]

I'll pass the info on to TCS, but to really get to the bottom of this you are going to need to contact them. I'm acting as an intermediary right now and it would go a lot faster with direct communication.

[mck]

Sure. Thanks. Will call them after the holidays. Don't think the shop where I live has another ipb-10. Would be happy to try the same sequence on another ipb-10 with the same ipad to determine if this is an isolated issue to the particular ipb-10 that I have. Anyways, I should let you go and enjoy the holidays. Thanks much for your strong support.

[conjurerofriffs]

This review is great! I have some more questions that I am unable to find the answers to.

Do the delay/echo trails continue when switching patches or turning off the effect?

Can the usb be used to control external midi pedals?

Can the bottom row of switches toggle the effects and the top row toggle the presets?

How long/bad is the delay between switching presets?

Can any assignable foot-switch control the amp loop/efx loop

Can the vswitch be assigned to toggle and effect on or off other than the wah?

Can the vswitch be turned off, so you don't accidentally turn the wah on?

Can the tuner be set to something other than 440? ie, 427 or 450?

Will they incorporate a tap tempo in the future?

Will they incorporate a looper in the future?

Can you assign a speaker cab while using your own physical preamp? For example I have an RP1000, but when I use the amp loop, I cant assign a speaker cabinet. I wish I could because my signal going to the P.A. is just the preamp and it sounds harsh.

Thanks in advance!

[Anderton]

 

Originally Posted by conjurerofriffs

This review is great! I have some more questions that I am unable to find the answers to.

Do the delay/echo trails continue when switching patches or turning off the effect?

 

No, the trails stop when you change presets or turn off an effect (if it has delay).

 

Can the usb be used to control external midi pedals?

 

No. At present, the USB 2.0 port provides an audio interface (44.1kHz, 24-bit, four channel streams - 2 to DAW, 2 from DAW).

 

Can the bottom row of switches toggle the effects and the top row toggle the presets?

 

No, but why would you want to do that? The current setup makes it harder to trigger the wrong preset if you're careless with the tap dancing. Given the choice between changing presets or an effects status accidentally, I'd take the effects status.

 

How long/bad is the delay between switching presets?

 

Excellent question, I should have mentioned that it's virtually instantaneous, with no clicks and only a very short gap (enough to prevent clicks; it's not really even audible as a gap, just a change from one preset to the next). The iPB-10 gets very high marks in this regard.

 

Can any assignable foot-switch control the amp loop/efx loop?

 

The Amp and Effects loop buttons are dedicated buttons that are separate from the preset and effects switches.

 

Can the vswitch be assigned to toggle and effect on or off other than the wah?

 

Yes and no. The V-Switch toggles between Wah and Pedal. The “normal” option would be wah and volume, so if the pedal was in Wah mode and you pressed down on the V-Switch, the pedal would now control volume. However, you can assign basically any effect parameter instead of volume. For example, if you had delay in a patch, you could switch between selecting Wah and Delay repeats (or Delay level, or whatever).

 

Can the vswitch be turned off, so you don't accidentally turn the wah on?

 

Yes, but with a conditional no. You can calibrate the V-Switch sensitivity, and at really low values, no matter how hard I stomped on it I couldn’t trigger the V-Switch. The reason why I say “conditional no” is maybe if I weighed 400 pounds and was Sasquatch, I could hit it hard enough to trigger it.

 

Can the tuner be set to something other than 440? ie, 427 or 450?

 

Yes and no. You can’t tweak the A-440 tuning to a different frequency, but you can set Ab, G, or Gb as a reference if you’re into tuning down.

 

Will they incorporate a tap tempo in the future?

 

Mr. DigiTechRep would have to answer that, but he’s probably sworn to secrecy about the future. He got REALLY upset when I mentioned the anti-gravity update in another post, and made me delete the reference.

 

Will they incorporate a looper in the future?

 

Depending on how you define looper, it already has one...the Tape and Digital Delays can do up to five seconds with a repeat hold, so you can layer parts and “freeze” them.

 

Can you assign a speaker cab while using your own physical preamp? For example I have an RP1000, but when I use the amp loop, I cant assign a speaker cabinet. I wish I could because my signal going to the P.A. is just the preamp and it sounds harsh.

 

I’m not quite sure I understand the question...are you saying you want to use only the iPB-10's cab emulation functions If so, why not just go through the Stomp loop instead?

Hope this helps, welcome to the thread!

[Anderton]

 

Originally Posted by GBSteve

Hi there. I am intrigued by this device but I have a fundamental question. After reading everything posted here, I don't believe anybody has mentioned using this box through a guitar amplifier.

 

Great question. Yes, you can use the iPB-10 either going direct, or through an amp. The output has a mixer/amp switch that changes levels as appropriate, and if going through a mixer, adds cabinet emulation (which of course isn't needed if you're going through a physical amp). It's also possible to do stereo if you're splitting to two amps, or you can take a mono output.

Welcome to the thread!

[SkyhighRocks]

I used my iPB for the first time at my casino gig last night. It performed flawlessly! I had great tone, effects and things were easier. My only issue so far is the small gap when I change presets. It was noticeable...maybe not to the crowd and in a mix but I could hear it every time. Hopefully that gets addressed in a future app update. Another gig tonight at a hotel for NYE...looking forward to using it again!

[mannydingo]

 

Originally Posted by SkyhighRocks

My only issue so far is the small gap when I change presets. It was noticeable...maybe not to the crowd and in a mix

 

If the crowd can't hear it then, to me, it's acceptable. It would probably bother me initially and then I'd get used to it. Again, that's only as long as it's not enough to be noticed by the audience.

[Den]

When you think about it, switching amp channels and stomping on different pedals takes at least a few seconds with a conventional rig, so a brief pause between presets shouldn't be a problem. When the music is good, people don't notice any of the little things we do. And when there are hot girls dancing to my music, I'm sure not focused on my preset switches either.

[SkyhighRocks]

 

Originally Posted by Den

When you think about it, switching amp channels and stomping on different pedals takes at least a few seconds with a conventional rig, so a brief pause between presets shouldn't be a problem. When the music is good, people don't notice any of the little things we do. And when there are hot girls dancing to my music, I'm sure not focused on my preset switches either.

 

I agree! It just seemed like more than a millisecond gap...closer to a second. It was more than I'm used to. I'll try to pay a little more attention to it at tonight's gig. Other than that, this thing rocks

[Den]

I just fired up my iPB-10 and tested the switching ... no lag of any sort on mine. I jumped through presets and also switched pedals in and out and it seems instantaneous to me. When I'm using the extension cable, and I load preset from the library that's not assigned to a patch location, I get a few secong lag while the preset loads ... but no lag with presets assigned and onboard.

[Anderton]

Nothing like quantification...

So I ran audio into Sonar X1, and recorded what happens when you switch presets.

There are a few instructive things here. First, it seems that switching either occurs on a zero-crossing, or there's a very quick fade to zero. This would account for the lack of clicks.

Second, the gap is totally silent.

Third, I switched several times and the gap was a pretty constant. For this one I made sure to go from a preset with delay to another with delay so that the delay buffer would have to be flushed prior to switching (as the tails don't spill over to the next preset, I assume the buffer is cleared). The gap measured about 58.5 milliseconds, which if you think about it, is quite good to dump a whole set of parameters and load a new set.

As a point of comparison, for analog effects - not even effects that needed to load parameters - I always built in a 10ms fade out + 10ms fade-in when switching between effects for clickless switching.

As a rough rule of thumb, I would consider 100ms to be the dividing line between okay and not okay. Under 100ms, people will have a hard time noticing a gap. Over 100ms, you can detect a gap.

[mannydingo]

My GSP1101 and Control 2 combo give zero gap to my ears.

[Den]

As far as I'm concerned Craig ... if you aren't going to make any effort to answer our questions here professionally, then why even bother with these pro reviews???? LOL

Seriously, thanks for this info. Much appreciated.

[Anderton]

Time for some more audio examples. For this one, I picked the first patch in Bank 2 - Plexi-Drive.

The first four measures are just the amp/cab and the Screamer distortion pedal, which is the present default. For the next four measures, I hit the footswitch to bring in the Chorus effect. The next four measures add in tape echo, and after that, four measures that also add in reverb.

For good measure, there's a lead sound toward the end that uses all the effects as well.

I must say that I think the cabs are really good, that's where a lot of amp sims fall down. These sound very organic, and I haven't found an iPB-10 cab yet with enough fizz to demo how to get rid of fizz. But I'll keep looking

FYI the guitar is a Gibson Firebird X, set for a Les Paul neck pickup emulation.

[Anderton]

 

Originally Posted by mannydingo

My GSP1101 and Control 2 combo give zero gap to my ears.

 

Well, I certainly wouldn't consider the gap in the iPB-10 objectionable...but hey, I can post an audio example of what happens when you switch!

I'll go plug in some patch cords and fire up Sonar again. And I'll make sure to switch in the middle of a power chord so it's worse-case conditions.

[Anderton]

 

Originally Posted by Den

As far as I'm concerned Craig ... if you aren't going to make any effort to answer our questions here professionally, then why even bother with these pro reviews???? LOL

 

I must admit that I'm enough of a geek that doing this kind of analysis is part of the fun of doing these reviews. Also, I like the chord progression I did in the previous "build a patch" example, so I think I'll steal it from myself.

[Anderton]

Well, the proof is in the pudding, as they say...however, this isn't pudding, so instead of eating this post, please download the audio example.

I must say that on playback, the gap seemed like it wasn't even close to being an issue. I checked the spacing between patches to see if somehow it was less than 50ms, but no, it was a pretty constant 50 or so ms from one patch to another.

Just to make it as nasty a test as possible (DigiTechRep wouldn't expect anything less from me), not only did I keep the sound sustaining through the patch changes, after recording the audio example I went back and normalized each of the sections of audio to provide the greatest possible contrast between full volume, and the silence that occurs during a gap.

Pretty impressive AFAIC, I know what's having to happen internally to change patches.

Oh, and by the way...I paid special attention to how hard it would be to nuke the iPad while hitting the footswitches. You would have to make a serious, conscious effort if you wanted to damage it. The "blast shiel"' in post #92 would make it virtually impossible.

[mannydingo]

That's not what I would call a gap. I think the IPB-10 does just fine in that department as per your clip. I don't know how SkyHighRocks is getting a gap. Maybe he's using a patch that uses every effect including the kitchen sink effect.

[Anderton]

 

Originally Posted by mannydingo

That's not what I would call a gap. I think the IPB-10 does just fine in that department as per your clip. I don't know how SkyHighRocks is getting a gap. Maybe he's using a patch that uses every effect including the kitchen sink effect.

 

Well, I agree that it's not significant. Technically, 58ms is a gap, but not one with practical ramifications.

Isn't it cool we can post audio examples?

Interestingly, that 58 ms seems pretty much constant no matter which patch I threw at it. Maybe I didn't try a challenging enough patch, or maybe that's just how long it takes to flush & load all parameters.

What might be happening with SkyHighRocks is that there's a psychological component to changing patches. It's easy to perceive changing from one patch to another as having a "gap" because of the differential between sounds. In fact, I think that perhaps normalizing the sound clips minimized this effect, because there was less perceived volume difference between sounds.

But yeah, the iPB-10 sure is a whole other animal compared to those underpowered old-school digital devices that burped for a few seconds every time you changed presets!

[mannydingo]

I can tell you what used to make me think my RP500 and RP1000 had a bigger gap than they did when playing at bedroom volume: My clicking and letting go immediately as if the switch was on fire and would burn through my shoe. I don't know why I would do that. It did something psychologically to me, similar to what you are saying. When I started changing presets without taking my foot off immediately I didn't perceive such a long gap.

Now, with the GSP1101, I can do it the old way or the new way and I hear no gap. It seems there has to be some kind of gap for the mind to falsely elongate it. The second chip in the GSP1101 is just such a sweet extra. Mind you, I'm not talking about a patch with reverb or delay leaving tails. If you add rever or delay tails into the equation, not only is there zero gap but I guess you could call it going into the negative millisecond numbers.

[jts_2003]

I have to ask where there is a Phrase Looper. Certain sites, such as sweetwater, describe the product to contain a phrase looper. I have grown very fond of the simple looper I had with my rp1000 but now am disappointed as it appears there is no such looper with the ipb. I have a fs3x footswitch (this footswitch allows control of the looper when plugged into the rp1000) that I even tried hooking up to the "footswitch" jack on the back mentioned earlier in this post, but it wasn't what I expected. It actually came up asking me to calibrate my expression pedal which I thought was rather odd. Please tell me something is coming down the pipe for a looper, and also for a tap tempo button. I can't believe these features were skipped, and I am somewhat disappointed by that.