4 Cable Method TUTORIAL + IN-DEPTH Explanation 

Awesome to hear!

boost EFX before loop, timing EFX (delay, reverb) after loop and amp block. OD > DIST > CHORUS > LOOP > AMP > MIXER > DELAY > REVERB

If you're talking about the FX Loop block, yes, you can think of it as your amp (preamp)👍 And you have the ability to activate or bypass it. And you can change it's placement in the signal chain.

To try and make this as simple as possible, forget about the Pod for a minute. I'm going to try and over-simplify so use this as a guide and not a word-for-word exact explanation. A guitar amp has two sections, a Pre-amp which shapes your tone, and a Power amp which makes your tone loud. When you use a pedal, typically you plug your guitar into the pedal and then it goes to the amp, which means the signal chain would be guitar>pedal>preamp>poweramp. Some pedals, like overdrives and distortions, sound great when used in this order. Other pedals, like delays and time based effects, don't sound the best if they are placed before the pre-amp, so amp builders will put an "effects loop" in the amps signal chain after the pre-amp but before the power amp. This way you could plug your guitar into an overdrive pedal, then plug that into your amp, then you would plug a cable from the "FX send" on the amp into the input of your delay pedal, then the output of the pedal to the "FX return" on the amp, making your signal chain guitar>overdrive>pre-amp>delay>power amp. The Pod also has a built in FX loop. If you are plugging your pod into a computer and not using a physical guitar amp, but you wanted to use some other physical pedals with it, you could plug your pedals into the FX loop and then pick where those pedals go in your chain (for example, before the amp block if you're using overdrive pedals, or after the amp block for delay.) Now, if you are plugging your Pod straight into a physical guitar amp, your signal chain is going to be guitar>pod>preamp>poweramp, which means your delays from the pod might sound bad, and if you want to use a pre-amp model in the pod your tone is still going to be changed by the physical guitar amp's preamp. By using Jon's method, your signal chain will essentially be guitar>pod>preamp>pod>power amp, so you can put your Pod overdrive effects before the physical guitar amp preamp, and your delays after the preamp. With his method, you can also eliminate the tone-shaping from your physical guitar amp and use one of the pre-amp models from the pod instead, or use a footswitch to switch between them. As for why we do those connections, we are essentially putting the physical guitar amp preamp into the FX loop on the Pod, so you can put your Pod effects before or after the preamp (by placing your effects blocks before or after the "FX loop" block). As for "what if we reverse those connections" there are multiple options for that, and hopefully now you'll understand the purpose of the ins/outs and can play around if you want.

@@mazzymazzer1969 Thank you for your awesome explanation! I finally get it. Thank you for taking your time explaining this to us newbies. It really got through me now.

I did have a question would pod’s amp models sounds realistic or better using 4 cable method in live gigs?

​@Thesamtvv it's possible, definitely depends on your amp setup, the room, and the sound setup