Joyo PXL Live

Drew_TNBD

So Joyo told me about these back in January. Looks like they're coming...

http://www.joyoaudio.com/en/product/show_204.html

vasselmeyer

Is that the one with amp switching and midi? I have the PXL Pro which is the same but no midi. It's a solid piece of equipment and works very well indeed. If I needed midi switching I wouldn't hesitate in picking one of these up.

Drew_TNBD

vasselmeyer said:

Is that the one with amp switching and midi? I have the PXL Pro which is the same but no midi. It's a solid piece of equipment and works very well indeed. If I needed midi switching I wouldn't hesitate in picking one of these up.

Yes boss. It has midi.

digitalscream

I'm pretty much sold on the idea of one of these, although I'm not sure exactly how I'd use it.

I have two questions:

1 - Can the loops handle a line-level signal, given that they're buffered-bypass?

2 - Since they're buffered-bypass, can this keep the trails of delay/reverb pedals after the loop is disengaged?

EDIT: Oooo....it can do simultaneous MIDI through the MIDI port and MIDI-over-USB. Clever.

Drew_TNBD

It's an interesting product. 8 loops. Midi straight to an amp. Switch everything based purely on presets.

Which I'm not 100% sure I could live with.

digitalscream

Drew_fx said:

It's an interesting product. 8 loops. Midi straight to an amp. Switch everything based purely on presets.

Which I'm not 100% sure I could live with.

Not exactly. 8 loops, split into two groups of 4 so that us sensible people can use effects in front of the amp and the effects loop.

Then...yes, there are preset combinations of loops, but there's nothing preventing you stomping on your pedals as well. The resulting system essentially behaves like your standard multi-effects unit except that it remembers the on/off state of each effect. Well, that and the fact that the on/off state persists between presets if the effect exists in more than one loop combination.

I actually quite like that. It's like having a normal board, but you have additional shortcuts if you need to get to a particular combination in a hurry and don't have enough limbs below your waist.

Drew_TNBD

digitalscream said:

Drew_fx said:

It's an interesting product. 8 loops. Midi straight to an amp. Switch everything based purely on presets.

Which I'm not 100% sure I could live with.

Not exactly. 8 loops, split into two groups of 4 so that us sensible people can use effects in front of the amp and the effects loop.

Then...yes, there are preset combinations of loops, but there's nothing preventing you stomping on your pedals as well. The resulting system essentially behaves like your standard multi-effects unit except that it remembers the on/off state of each effect. Well, that and the fact that the on/off state persists between presets if the effect exists in more than one loop combination.

I actually quite like that. It's like having a normal board, but you have additional shortcuts if you need to get to a particular combination in a hurry and don't have enough limbs below your waist.

Isn't the idea with these kinds of things that you'd have all your pedals enabled constantly, and switch them in and out based on the loops? I kinda think if you're gonna switch the pedals individually as well that it defeats the point of the unit somewhat.

Also I think you can stack the loops, so if you really wanted you could have 4 effects pre and 4 effects post, or just 8 effects into the front like what I would do.

Drew_TNBD

One of the best setups I ever had was two Voodoo Labs Pedal Switchers and a Commander unit. It meant I could leave all my pedals enabled, turn on any individual effect with the pedal switchers, or turn on multiple effects with the Commander unit. Only thing it couldn't do with switch my amp - but only because it didn't support midi at the time.

It only had 10 presets though, which was enough for just the effects, but wouldn't have been enough if I wanted it to switch my amp too. I've often thought about going back to those, but they took up a lot of space and was quite messy.

digitalscream

Drew_fx said:

Isn't the idea with these kinds of things that you'd have all your pedals enabled constantly, and switch them in and out based on the loops? I kinda think if you're gonna switch the pedals individually as well that it defeats the point of the unit somewhat.

Also I think you can stack the loops, so if you really wanted you could have 4 effects pre and 4 effects post, or just 8 effects into the front like what I would do.

Yup, that's the original idea, but there's nothing stopping you doing it both ways (presets and individual pedals) and getting the best of both worlds, like you do with (for example) the MFC.

And yes, you can stack the loops, so it becomes like the PXL8 but with MIDI and relay control.

Interestingly, this one only seems to have two relay outputs, whereas the PXL Pro has 4 (but without MIDI).

Drew_TNBD

Hmmm... so lets say you're controlling effects and your amp at the same time from this unit. You're at a point in the song where you need distortion and delay. So you go to that preset. Then you need just distortion, so instead of finding a preset for it... you just turn off the delay. Then you need clean and delay. But switching to that preset will obviously not turn on the delay since you've turned it off on the pedal.

That'd annoy me I think.

digitalscream

Drew_fx said:

Hmmm... so lets say you're controlling effects and your amp at the same time from this unit. You're at a point in the song where you need distortion and delay. So you go to that preset. Then you need just distortion, so instead of finding a preset for it... you just turn off the delay. Then you need clean and delay. But switching to that preset will obviously not turn on the delay since you've turned it off on the pedal.

That'd annoy me I think.

Indeed - so what you do is work out a logical sequence of requirements, and set the presets up accordingly. In that situation, I'd have a separate preset for each. However, it's still no harder to do it that way than to do it with individual pedals.

Drew_TNBD

Yeah true. Plus banking up and down looks quite quick on this unit, and I like that everything is in a straight line and not on rows. Plus I think you have the option of a bypass preset too.

ChrisMusic

A quick question about this.  I haven't read the blurb on the unit yet.  Am I right in assuming the the pedal loops are in a fixed sequence with one of these units ?

i.e. you can't have "dirt 1" stacked into "dirt 2" on one preset and then have "dirt 2" stacked into "dirt 1" on another.

On the subject of reverb and delay trails, I can't see that level of effect specific complexity being incorporated in this unit.  It is probably where digitalscream's comments about directly switching the appropriate pedal comes into it's own, to keep the trails intact.  But I am with Drew on the fact that it increases the complexity and tracking how things are being used, and increases the likelihood of making mistakes when switching between patches etc, and that's not good for live use, so I'm not sure it is a realistic solution.  I am happy to be wrong with that though.

digitalscream

ChrisMusic said:

On the subject of reverb and delay trails, I can't see that level of effect specific complexity being incorporated in this unit.  It is probably where digitalscream's comments about directly switching the appropriate pedal comes into it's own, to keep the trails intact.  But I am with Drew on the fact that it increases the complexity and tracking how things are being used, and increases the likelihood of making mistakes when switching between patches etc, and that's not good for live use, so I'm not sure it is a realistic solution.  I am happy to be wrong with that though.

I don't think effect trails is a particularly difficult thing to do - in a single-loop situation, it's just a case of bypassing the input but leaving the output connected. OK, so in this case there'd be a certain amount of mixing-in to do given the multiple loops, but it's still a solvable problem.