Gear Review: Line 6 Pod Studio UX1

If you've been reading here for a while, you know that my previous guitar recording interface, the Lightsnake, had some serious limitations and generally left me pretty unhappy with the results. I can say now that the Lightsnake has been retired, and has been replaced with a Line 6 POD Studio UX1. After playing with it for about a week, I think I've seen enough to give it a proper review.

The Hardware
To kick things off, let's look at the box itself. The UX1 connects via USB, and all power is handled through the USB cable - no additional power supply needed. On the front of the box, there are 3 ports; one XLR jack, one 1/4" unbalanced instrument input, and a 1/4" headphone jack. On top of the box are a power light and 2 knobs: Mic Gain and Output. No big surprises in the function of each of those items. The back of the unit has jacks for two 1/4" analog outputs, two 1/4" Line Inputs, one 1/4" Stereo Monitor line in, as well as the USB socket.

As you might imagine, you can record from any of the inputs, except the Stereo Monitor line in - that acts as a pass-through for anything you want to show up in the mix but not be part of the "recordable" input.

Sound Card
Oh, did I mention it functions as a complete sound interface, including output? That's right. It comes with its own ASIO driver which you can easily tap into with most any audio software that supports ASIO. When I connected REAPER to the "ASIO UX1", then ALL of my audio output from REAPER was directed at the UX1. I have read where this can be confusing if you don't think about what you're doing, but it's a good thing. In my case, I have a moderately cheap sound card in my PC. With this, I don't really have to worry about upgrading that card, since I'm bypassing it for my audio work.

Latency? We Don't Need No Steenking Latency...
One admirable trait of the UX1 is that it is able to pass through the input audio to the output WITHOUT waiting for the PC to handle it directly. This gives you effectively zero latency in the monitors, even if you have a relatively high latency setting in the ASIO driver itself.
From my testing on an existing project, I have reduced the slips and stutters in my system from being a frequent occurrence to flawless audio by incorporating the UX1 into my setup.

Is It Clean?
If you read my review of the Lightsnake, you'll know it was a dirty, dirty interface, with odd pulses of interference and general noise. The UX1 suffers from NONE of those problems. Line 6 boasts a greater than 100 dB signal to noise ratio, and I believe it. Running the same spectrographs on the signal from the UX1 yielded a much cleaner signal, with a slight noise level in the lowest extremes of the graph, but nothing audible and it was a steady baseline, so it essentially vanishes when you record.

Bundled Software
The POD Studio UX1 comes bundled with 3 programs: Riffworks T4, Ableton Live Lite 7 Line 6 Edition, and POD Farm. I haven't played with Riffworks yet, and I already know that Ableton is a very cut-down version of that program, supposedly tailored to the hardware bundled with it. Considering this is stripped even further than the LE version, I'm not too interested in it. POD Farm is where the real second stage fun comes in.

POD Farm
POD Farm replaces the former Gearbox software that used to be bundled with Line 6 interfaces. The idea and many of the features are the same, but POD Farm has a much slicker interface. POD Farm includes a stunning array of software models of amps, effects, and cabinets that you plug together in a very obvious signal chain on screen. These are mostly based on real gear, including Marshall's JCM-800, Fender's Deluxe Reverb, and even the Orange AD30TC. They give cute names in the program, but they are very forthcoming on what the sounds are modeled after on their web site. Anyway, you have pretty much the gauntlet of gear to work with - certainly more than the home studio could ever hold much less afford - and there are additional model packs available to buy from Line 6 in case you are craving more gear. While more options are always better, I'm sure what I have will more than meet my tonal needs for quite some time to come. POD Farm also allows you to break your signal into dual signal chains, so you can get some really powerful and wild sounds going.

Playing Standalone
POD Farm works great as a standalone program. It gives you some nice options - like sending not only the fully processed signal out (to your DAW), but also sending the unprocessed/raw signal out (to your DAW) at the same time. So you can record the completely dry signal at the same time you record it fully effected, and also be pushing the signal out to your studio monitors via the 1/4" outputs in back. I'm loving it!

Playing As A Plug-in
Pod Farm as a plug-in needs a little work at this point. As of this writing, POD Farm 1.02 is the current version, and it has a problem in about half of the major DAWs on the market. Apparently, if your DAW has a 64-bit plug-in host (and no 32-bit host as a fall-back), then POD Farm will crash. Yes, REAPER is one of those affected. The workaround to this is to use a VST Wrapper to act as a middle-man between REAPER and POD Farm. I've been using ACON's EffectChainer, and it works OK, but you are left with the inability to use any Automation ("knob twiddling") on anything inside POD Farm, since the DAW can only see the EffectChainer, not POD Farm itself. Line 6 has posted in their forums that this issue has been logged and is on the "to do" list. Hopefully this problem is resolved soon, since "knob twiddling" is often needed.

Standalone and Plug-in Together
I like to use both versions together. I record through the standalone version into REAPER (monitoring the processed signal and recording the dry signal) and having a plugin on the recorded track with the plug-in version of POD Farm replicating what I was doing with the standalone version. This gives me the flexibility to change the sound after recording, but not having to rely on just hearing the dry tone while playing. In this fashion I can also record the wet signal at the same time, so it gives you a lot of configuration possibilities.

Tone Port vs. POD Studio
If you've looked around, there is a TonePort UX1 as well as a POD Studio UX1. The hardware is exactly the same, except the TonePort has a red faceplace and the POD Studio has a black faceplate. The only real difference is in the bundled software. If you have a TonePort, it comes bundled with the standalone version of GearBox, you can upgrade for free to the standalone version of POD Farm, but you'll have to buy the plug-in version of POD Farm. Both versions (standalone and plug-in) of POD Farm come bundled with the POD Studio. To save yourself time, I'd suggest the POD Studio UX1 over the TonePort UX1, not only because it will save you some time, but also because the black faceplate looks much cooler than the red.

Bottom Line
The bottom line is that you owe it to yourself to buy a POD Studio UX1 (or the big brothers UX2 and UX8). The Line 6 POD Studio UX1 is a simple box with a simple purpose - which is does amazingly well. It sells new for around $149.99 at most shops, and it is fabulous. The hardware is solid and very clean, and the software so thoroughly exceeds my expectations that I am becoming inspired by the wide variety of tonal possibilities. The only difficulty I've found at this point is that POD Farm offers so many options, I'm spending more time fiddling with new sounds and not enough actual work on recording. If you need to record audio, you need one of these. Trust me.

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Curing Latency on a Windows PC: ASIO4ALL

One of the biggest issues in electronic recording is the issue of latency - the delay caused by the time it takes to process the audio signal. If you're using a Windows PC, chances are that you are running on a system that is slightly unstable for audio. The average user has whatever sound card that came bundled with their PC and are happy because it makes the correct noises. When you get into electronic recording, you will find that your system has serious latency issues.

How Latent Are You?
An easy way to demonstrate latency is to plug in a microphone to your PC, enable it so the speakers are monitoring the microphone, and talk/sing/make noises. Hear that delay between your voice and the voice coming form the speakers? That's your latency at work. Now try to imagine trying to sing or play along with a recording, where the pre-recorded bits are THAT far apart from what you are contributing. It won't be music. It'll be audible chaos.

What Do We Do?
Fortunately we have a easy and free solution in the form of ASIO4ALL, a "free to the end user" project that acts as an ASIO driver for your Windows PC. In simplest terms, it will add support for ASIO, which is an open audio driver format that bypasses a lot of the operating system overhead and goes directly to the hardware.

Does This Replace Anything?
ASIO4ALL does not replace anything on your system - it is simply another option you can use in your audio programs (you'll see ASIO4ALL as an audio device to use). It doesn't replace anything, it doesn't overclock anything, it just acts as a good traffic cop. The worst it can do it give you more options to experiment with on your computer. Options are ALWAYS a good thing to have.

How Do I Use It?
You run the installer and that's most of it. When you launch your DAW or other audio processing program, you should be able to find an option to use the ASIO4ALL audio driver/audio interface/audio system (the exact term depends on the program). Most audio programs will let you interface directly into it, so it really acts as a fully integrated piece of your gear. (For example, in REAPER, Tools->Options->Audio->Device->Audio System shows ASIO4ALL as a selectable "Audio System", and the "ASIO Configuration" on that screen will launch ASIO4ALL's control panel).

In the control panel, you'll see a list of all audio interfaces it identifies in your system. In the lower left is a slider marked "ASIO Buffer Size = XXX Samples". Most the slider to the left to decrease latency, and to the right to increase latency. You can experiment with your system by lowering it, playing something, and then adjusting some more. If you reach a point where the audio is breaking up/crackling or otherwise sounds bad, then you need to increase the buffer size. That's pretty much it. (There is an Advanced Options menu, but if you want to go in there, you'd better read the ASIO4ALL documentation really carefully! Most of the options are way more than most users need.) Once you set it, everything should be fine.

Any Other Advantages?
In addition to controlling latency on a per-interface level, ASIO4ALL is seen as a single audio system by the PC. This means that you can use multiple that means you can run multiple physical audio devices at the same time, even in programs that only support a single device. In a normal program, if you select DirectSound, WDM, or one of the other non-ASIO drivers, you will be limited to 1 input device and 1 output device. Running ASIO4ALL, I can use sound card inputs at the same time as USB inputs and the program doesn't mind. Without ASIO in the middle, this would not usually be possible.

If you want to give it a spin, you can find it at http://asio4all.com.

At the time of the writing, the current version of ASIO4ALL is v.29 beta 4.

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Terminology: ASIO

ASIO, which is an acronym for Audio Stream Input/Output, is a (primarily) Windows-based open audio driver protocol. ASIO was developed by Steinberg (the same company responsible for the VST plug-in format). The primary goal of the ASIO protocol is to bypass the many layers of audio processing inherent in the design of Windows audio systems. By bypassing these additional layers, the speed at which the audio can be processed is decreased.

ASIO is not very commonly seen on other Operating Systems, since most major Operating Systems (other than Windows) do not suffer from the same latency issues.

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