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Hi, I'm feeling kind of dense here, but with the Zbox (or really any impedance matcher) should my 896hd input be set to line level? the idea with the zbox is not to get the dynamic variance, right?

I'm thinking that I"m missing something, but whatever I had it on before, when I was playing through guitar rig things were cutting out strangely, and i'm sure it has something to do with level.

Thanks!

Any DI box sends out low impedance signal via the XLR connector (Zbox has 1/4" I believe) that needs to be amplified by a mic preamp, so I would say set your device to mic level and adjust accordingly.

Really? I don't think it matters. At least on my 8pre, the switch is simply a gain attenuator. The signal goes through the same circuitry whether or not it's line/instrument/mic. But that's the whole problem; not only is the signal level different, but the impedence is as well. That's where the ZBox (or a DI) comes in, converting HiZ impedence to LowZ. That little "Mic/Line" switch is just an 20dB attenuator.

And that's also one of the differences between a DI and the ZBox. Most DIs attenuate the signal down to mic level since many analog boards don't even account for line level signals. The ZBox doesn't attenuate, so while it prepares it for impedence matching, it doesn't cut the signal level.

I may be totally wrong, as this isn't really my area of expertise, but when i've used my ZBox, the level is enough that I don't think I'd want to use the 20dB attenuation switch.

I think that I was assuming that all of the amp simulator plugins were looking for a super low level guitar signal, since they are acting as the amplifier. I actually called line 6 to tlak to them about it, and they were saying that within the plugin, because of all of the different stages of gain, that you SHOULD put a healthy signal into the plugin.

I guess this would make sense because with those amp sim plugins, you can run all types of sounds through them, not just low level guitar.