I guess blogging is about bleating your opinions out into the void and I have a burning opinion so here goes. It’s a rant about music equipment, so if that’s not your cuppa, you can stop reading now.

When I started doing some music playing again, I wanted to get kitted up for some computer recording and (bass) guitar playing with the following constraints: 1) not spend a fortune as this is really ultimately hobbyist stuff; and 2) I live in an apartment so I have both noise and space constraints so an amp was basically not feasible. By the nature of the signal, basses tend to carry and irritate the neighbors. Originally I thought about just playing through my computer and use the effects and such from either GarageBand or Logic, but that was really prohibitive, and didn’t give the control of having pedals to dis/engage while playing. Something else was needed.

A friend hipped me to Line 6 – a company that specializes in effects and amplifier “modeling” technology. The had a product called the Bass PODxt Live – all of their bass amplifier models and a selection of effects built into a pedalboard. It also had a USB interface for just plugging right into your computer to direct record. Seemed like a reasonable way to go. Bang for your buck, headphone jack for practicing and all I needed was a USB cable to interface it with my (Logic-based) recording and mixing setup. My initial experience playing around with it was positive as I started practicing again, and I also ended up picking up one of their Variax basses (a bass guitar with similar modeling technology that mimics the sounds of a variety of bass guitars).

Then I started getting down to doing some actual recording. That’s when things went bad. The honeymoon is over and I am now basically done with Line 6 and the spotty quality control across their product lines.

First off, the USB interface was really not very well suited for direct recording. The interface was only 16-bit and 24-bit is really the way to go. Especially with bass signals I think – 24-bit just has so much more life and resonance to it. No big deal. I ended up picking up a PreSonus FireBox – a 24/96 firewire-based recording interface. Nice little piece of equipment. But getting any decent sounding recordings was really very inconsistent. A nice tone that I had whipped up from scratch using their off-board editing software (which was cool) either sounded lifeless and flat, had crap recording levels, or just plain didn’t sound the way it did when I programmed it.

Other problems emerged as well. For some unknown reason, whenever engaging a modulation effect (such as a flanger or phaser) it would cut the signal drastically. So, if one wanted a setup where one would engage and disengage a mod effect during the song (something I do like to do) one was sort of out of luck. I spoke to a friend who uses the guitar version of the same product about that and he was mystified. He uses a phaser all the time and indicated than when engaging the mod effect that you actually got a rounder and fuller tone (as tends to happen with real-life effects as well).

I posted a question to the very excellent and helpful Logic Users Group about the problem and someone suggested monitoring the output of the pod running through Logic while I programmed it to cater to what the recording application was actually hearing. So I plugged it in, turned the outputs up all the way and went to work. That did in fact give some better results, but I made the discovery that the amp models vary wildly in their output results. Sure, there is some natural variation, but there is no reason why the output should peak out around -1.2dB for one amp and barely twitch the meters at -18dB on another. A modeler is essentially a synthesizer (not totally accurate, but close enough) and since the output is generated there is no real good reason why the levels should not be somewhat consistent.

So now I was stuck in a situation where I need to hand-cater the tones and still sort of cross my fingers that it would sound ok when I recorded it. Moreover, I also needed to “work around” issues like the “mod effect signal cut”, and was sort of limited to what amp/cabinet combos I could use due to the recording level issue (oddly enough, users of the guitar product report the opposite problem – that the output is too hot and they need to turn it down). I’m trying to finish up some tracking parts for a song to share with a partner now and I’m spending more time sitting around hassling with the tone modeler (and ragging my ears out with headphones) than actually getting any work done. There had to be a better way.

In my travels to find answers, I saw several related problems with the bass products (levels, lack of life, etc), but someone mentioned having really good results with a newer Line 6 product called the TonePort. It’s a very reasonably-priced 24-bit USB recording interface where the amp models and effects live on your computer. The selection of models and effects was quite a bit less (especially for bass) but I figured that I only need a few (it did have some of my favorites) and was worth trying. I also wanted to sort of “reality check” my experience with the Podxt (levels, mod problem, etc) to see if it was “just me” or something flawed with the bass pod.

At first glance, I was pretty pleased with it. The models sounded nice, and unlike with the pod, were in stereo. It also did not suffer from unpredictable effect insert issues – the flangers and phasers gave me a nice full sound when I cut them in. The inline compressor had a gain control on it (unlike the one on my pedalboard) so I could make the overall sound a little stronger and punchier and get better recording levels. The quick-test recording results were better as well. While the levels were not exactly what I wanted, the overall sound was much better and sounded a great deal more “present” in the mix. So far, so good and it was looking like it might have been a reasonable stop-gap recording solution at least to get some stuff laid out.

And then, the problem emerged.

When playing any of the cleaner sounding models or preamps (including some of the unit’s own factory presets) I detected perceptible static-like distortion. Sometimes with a “pop” of static when I hit a string, other times, just a buzzing rattle when I let a string resonate. This is not the sound of improperly set buffer size, signal interference from the monitor, the sound of an overdriven amp, or the sound of clipping (I was no where near hitting the red zone). It was just distortion. I was using it on a G5 so it was not the USB issues that plagued certain PC chipsets (another nifty little issue plaguing that product) and I was nowhere near even making the system sweat. I had updated the controlling software as well to the newest revision. The problem could be re-created on multiple sets of headphones, and multiple guitars (both a Variax and my Warwick) at multiple monitor output levels and in recordings as well. Having dealt with buffer size and sample rate issues in Logic, I checked all that as well.

Some forum questions suggested that the unit might just be broken, but this was really the last straw.

Co-incidentally, Jamie bought me a 4-bus Yamaha mixer for my birthday this weekend and I had discovered the Tech 21 SansAmp Bass Driver DI box. In my internet travels looking for answers I got exposed to the “multi-effect box VS. individual effects” debate. Many argue that the quality of the effects in a multi-effects processor just cant stack up against a dedicated effect. I did some listening to some effect pedal samples and sort of agree. I was contemplating another multi-effects board but weighed the pros and cons and realized that a few dedicated high-quality effects that I like to use is probably better than a whole grab-bag of lower quality models. Sure, my new Boss Flanger cost 25% of what I got the pedalboard for, but it’s a much higher quality effect than the two flanger units that came in the pod (and it doesn’t mess up my signal power either). Using the preamp, a couple of effects, and running said into different channels on the mixer, I quickly found I had the variation and tone control I wanted out of the modeler w/out any of the headache and unpredictability (and the lush bonus of true stereo effects as well).

So the TonePort went back to the store and other than the Variax which is a great recording tool, I’m done with the Line 6 stuff. I need to restore the pod to it’s factory presets and sell it. This is a shame because they are a neat company of obvious talented technicians. But they seem to be the textbook case of a company that gets “mixed reviews” – some people really seem to have a lot of luck with their equipment (I understand that their modeling amplifiers are really sweet) and others do not. I was one of the ones that did not. There seems to be a lot of quality control variance across their product line and I’m not sure how a company with that profile gets away with that. Perhaps the TonePort was broken, or maybe the fact that their guitar tech gets much more attention than the related bass tech. I’m not sure. I don’t offer any of this up to engage in the seemingly-popular activity of hating on the company, just to offer up another view of one user’s experience with their products. In the end, for me, going the more traditional route just worked out better.

And now I’ll be able to spend much less time arguing with my rig and more time using it.