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X3 as an Interface

Discussion in 'Recording Gear and Equipment [BG]' started by taphappy, Jun 27, 2008.

  1. Jun 27, 2008 #1
    taphappy

    taphappy doot de doo

    Sep 28, 2007
    Tempe, Arizona
    Hey guys :)

    Looking to get a Pod X3 Live for several reasons - effects for my live sound, and utilizing as a studio interface to record guitars, bass, vocals.

    My guitarist stepped on the main slider of my Tascam TM-D1000 , and broke the circuit board, so it's eternally set to 0. Costs more to fix than to get on eBay. So, I still have my PCI-822 card installed (TDIF, S/PDIF, MIDI), but am not using it other than for MIDI. Don't particularly trust the drivers.

    The POD X3 Live has a 2.0 interface for direct recording, and an XLR input for microphones. And all the guitar and bass models already in it, atop some mic pres.

    My question is, for recording, will USB 2.0 suit my needs? This seems like an easy solution to all my problems, but my suspicious eyebrow (the right one) arches quizzically at anything that looks too convenient.

    I'm only recording one track at a time, and 480Mbps seems more than enough, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of what I'll get down to SONAR, nor does it say anything about latency, which, going 1/8" in through my onboard sound, I'm presently having to record and manually shift everything over an inch to the left to sync it up.

    And, yes, my computer is poopy (Athlon XP 2600+/640Mb Ram/Onboard aud and vid) and I'm gonna upgrade to a 6600 soon. But in the meantime, any input?

    And how about a better MIDI solution than the 822? I only use one keyboard controller for softsynths. Think I threw out my old MIDIMAN, but would a USB 1.0 MIDI interface free up resources?

    Thanks! :)

    -tap
     
  2. Jun 27, 2008 #2
    theory028

    theory028 Really Loud Hamburger.

    Jul 4, 2007
    Cedar Falls, IA
    I've got a Bass PODxt Live and I've managed to record with it once. Unfortunately, they don't have any Vista drivers so I can't do that anymore. Everytime I plug the PODxt in and try to set it up as my audio card (as an input device), Audition crashes. The same thing happens with Audacity. As soon as I unplug it, everything works. That's Vista for yah. Too bad Line 6 hasn't helped us out with compatible drivers.

    You say your computer is older, so I doubt you have Vista. Even so, I bet they'd have Vista drivers for the X3. I haven't checked, but it's a new enough product that they ought to.

    As for the quality, I was impressed. I've never recorded though, so I don't know what a good home recording is supposed to sound like. For my casual needs, it was perfect. One thing I noticed was that when I recorded with the patches (say, a synth effect), it'd be effects on the left side and the clean sound on the right. I was going to see if I could cut out one of the stereo channels and duplicate the left over for a stereo sound but with the same tone in each channel. That is when I discovered the Vista problems. I might just make a new partition and dual boot into XP for the sake of recording.

    The USB speeds didn't seem to be an issue for me. I did my recording on an old Dell Inspiron 9200 laptop with 768MB of RAM, a 5400RPM hdd, and a 1.6 GHz Intel Pentium M. The hardware seemed up to the challenge. Of course, those Pentium Ms were pretty good.

    I've never used the X3, but my experience with the Bass PODxt Live has been great. Recording was my main intention as well. It was very easy to set up and worked almost flawlessly. I'd recommend trying it out. The default patches needed some work, but it is a lot of fun to mess around with. My needs are probably a lot different from yours, but Line 6 has made a great piece of hardware.

    You may want to wait for someone with more recording experience to reply, but I just thought I'd share my experiences and opinions.
     
  3. Jun 27, 2008 #3
    taphappy

    taphappy doot de doo

    Sep 28, 2007
    Tempe, Arizona
    Right on, not at all...you got ears, good input :)

    As far as the hardware...did a whole album running 48+ tracks of audio on this thing five years ago, but that was SONAR 2, I think, not SONAR 7. With the advances in software bloat due to cheap RAM, and softsynths, the PC matters now.

    I only use this computer for recording and online (soon to change), so XP is the solution. First off, it doesn't eat 700MB just to get to your desktop, and everything's compatible.

    Per a dude on the Line6 forum trying to get his XT live to run in Vista:

    "I got my driver to load by making Monkey run in Windows XP compatibility mode. To do this just right click the Monkey icon and select properties, click the compatibility tab at the top, and check the box that says "Run this program in compatibility mode for: Windows XP (Service Pack 2)" Once you've done that simply click apply and ok, run Monkey and it should work. I havn't run into any problems with it yet."

    Try that? Temporary fix, but who knows :) They say they'll have a driver by this summer, but that could be September.
     
  4. Jun 27, 2008 #4
    theory028

    theory028 Really Loud Hamburger.

    Jul 4, 2007
    Cedar Falls, IA
    Thanks for the tip. I'll have to try out that compatibility thing. That'd be awesome if it would work. :) Then I could record a sample and let you hear what it may turn out like. I just added a small partition to my hard drive so I could install XP. Hopefully now I won't have to.

    --

    I just tried it out. It prompted me to get a new version of Monkey, but I still can't get anything to use it as an input device. :(
     
  5. Jun 27, 2008 #5
    taphappy

    taphappy doot de doo

    Sep 28, 2007
    Tempe, Arizona
    G'luck, bud :)
     
  6. Jun 27, 2008 #6
    theory028

    theory028 Really Loud Hamburger.

    Jul 4, 2007
    Cedar Falls, IA
    I'm not having much luck with this :( . I'm going to try to install XP sometime tomorrow. That may be the best way to deal with this.

    I hope the Vista drivers really are on the way. September is a long way away, though.