Line6 UX1

boycey

Howdy lads,
after years of promising myself I'd get some basic gear at home for recording I've finally decided to treat myself to a few goodies for Christmas. Just wondering do any of you use the Line 6 POD studio UX1? Any thoughts on it?
I'm intentionally keeping things simple, as it's just me and a drummer buddy sending ideas back and forth and adding bits and pieces as we go. He uses Ableton which comes packaged with the UX1, so I dont really want a different programme or anything in case of (non) compatibility issues. A cheapo midi controller will be another near future purchase for adding organ riffs and stuff.
While it comes with the usual amp sims and stuff which is cool, I'll also want to record my amp mic'd so if ye have any experience with the UX1 share your thoughts!

And finally, Merry Christmas one and all!
Kev.

BSOM

boycey wrote: »

Howdy lads,
after years of promising myself I'd get some basic gear at home for recording I've finally decided to treat myself to a few goodies for Christmas. Just wondering do any of you use the Line 6 POD studio UX1? Any thoughts on it?
I'm intentionally keeping things simple, as it's just me and a drummer buddy sending ideas back and forth and adding bits and pieces as we go. He uses Ableton which comes packaged with the UX1, so I dont really want a different programme or anything in case of (non) compatibility issues. A cheapo midi controller will be another near future purchase for adding organ riffs and stuff.
While it comes with the usual amp sims and stuff which is cool, I'll also want to record my amp mic'd so if ye have any experience with the UX1 share your thoughts!

And finally, Merry Christmas one and all!
Kev.

Hi Kev,

Any of the Line 6 stuff is great. The UX1 has an XLR in and a line in. It comes with Abelton Live, which has some deadly features on them. Dont order them off Thomann or what not. Line 6 is really well price in Ireland so you will get it for the same price or within a tenner and have someone to go back to if you have any problems.

J

eoin5

I wasnt able to get one to do direct monitoring. Maybe someone has managed to get it working on theirs but thats my experience of it.

Quality wise focusrite have a great small usb machine and id bet a wispa gold that theres better stuff in any tascam, maudio, edirol or yamaha interface for around the same blips. Still, its a great way to get some cheap amp modelling on your computer.

boycey

eoin5 wrote: »

I wasnt able to get one to do direct monitoring. Maybe someone has managed to get it working on theirs but thats my experience of it.

Quality wise focusrite have a great small usb machine and id bet a wispa gold that theres better stuff in any tascam, maudio, edirol or yamaha interface for around the same blips. Still, its a great way to get some cheap amp modelling on your computer.

Easy on there Eoin5, a Wispa Gold is not something you just casually bet with. Respect its velvety goodness.

On a more sensible note I'm googling some M-Audio stuff and some of the others you mentioned, theres a lot of good basic/starter stuff out there. The fact that the UX1 comes bundled with Abelton is a big plus point for me but not a deal maker either.
Has anyone any experience with the M-Audio black box? Or any good basic alternatives really, I do want to keep things really simple though and don't have any need for 16 tracks and loads of inputs etc.

Dave Total

The UX1 is a great way to get started on computer recording, 8 tracks of ableton live recording is plenty and you can always bounce the tracks down if you need more. Not only that, PODfarm is pretty sweet too.
To sum it up, you cant really go wrong for the price.

The Boarder Man

Hi,

I've owned a UX1 for a few months now and I think it would work well for what you want it for. I do find the audio output quality from the hardware a little dissapointing (I was hoping to use it for listening to music to instead of my laptops normal headphone out) but you can certainly make decent recordings with it.

The POD Farm software is fine for most straightforward purposes. You may find the routing options a little limited if you're a bit more experimental. The quality of the amp sims varies widely; while many are awful (e.g. all the "Line 6" ones) some are rather good. The same goes for the additional model packs - I bought 2 or 3 and although I wouldn't use most of them I felt it was worth it to get those extra few amps which I do use a lot. Not many ds/od options. Amps is really the focus here.

Don't know how much experience you have with amp modelling but it's worth spending a bit of time experimenting as you should be able to get much better sounds for your guitar/ears then the presets will provide.
Example: There's a few speaker sims which sound good across a broad range of amps so it's often worth trying these out with different amp models that you may not otherwise like. Also, using dual amps either mono or variously stereo split can be handy for balancing different amp models strengths and weaknesses.

Anyway, it's a handy all in one unit. I don't have experience with any other USB devices just an M-Audio 24/96 PCI card (excellent hardware though the drivers can be a little troublesome) so nothing to compare it with but I would recommend it for your purposes.

All of the above is just my opinion of course.

Get back to me if you have any particular questions.