Line6 POD Studio UX2 Review – Part 1
The Line6 POD Studio UX2 is more than an audio interface. Coupled with Line6’s POD Farm, the UX2 provides a wide breadth of amp and tone modeling to a guitarist’s toolbox along with a nice suite of recording tools.
Hardware Interface
The UX2 is the “bigger” brother of the POD Studio GX and UX1, and a “little” brother to the UX8. Armed with two XLR inputs (including +48V phantom power), two guitar/instrument inputs (pad or normal), a monitor in, and two 1/4″ line inputs, the UX2 provides adequate input capabilities for the home/small studio. The USB interface supports 1.2 or 2.0 specs. For outputs the UX2 provides L/R analog out and S/PDIF digital out. The front panel includes two analog level meters for visual feedback. The UX2 requires a connection to a computer to operate as it is USB bus powered.
The case construction is plastic and overall the unit is very light – so it’s not something you would want to take out gigging with you (look into the JM4 looper for that).
On top of the case are knobs for Mic 1/2 gain, monitor output level, and headphone level. A nice feature and placed readily available should you need to crank either up quickly.
The UX2 comes with Line6 POD Farm, Line6 GearBox, RiffWorks T4, Ableton Live (Line6 Edition) and Reason Adapted. Line6 also provides a utility called Line6 Monkey for license management and keeping your system up to date.
Installation of hardware and software is straightforward but it is recommended to launch Line6 Monkey after installing the drivers and accompanying software to obtain the appropriate licenses and install the latest patches/versions. One note of interest, which I personally experienced, is that plugging the UX2 into a USB hub can cause dropout and/or an annoying hum, move it to a USB port of it’s own and problem solved.
POD Farm
Line6 POD Farm is a great accompaniment to the UX2. POD Farm allows you to load a virtual amp and effect/pedal combination to match your favorite song or style. No more fussing around with cables and boxes, just click and load. POD Farm includes a large number of preset configurations based on style or songs and provides an integrated tuner should the need pop up. The amp selections include:
- Blackface ‘Lux
- Brit Gain 18
- Brit J-800
- Citrus D-30
- Class A-30 Top Boos
- Jazz Clean
- Line6 Chemical X
- Line6 Insane
- Line6 Piezacoustic 2
- Line6 Spinal Puppet
- Line6 Treadplate
- Plexi Jump Lead
- Plexi Lead 100
- Power Amp
- Small Tweed
- Solo 100 Head
- Treadplate Dual
- Tube Preamp
- Tweed B-Man
Tweaking an amp to fit your needs is all done on the virtual “panel”.
Each amp’s corresponding controls are represented and “grabbing” them with your mouse and adjusting them is quite easy, so getting “just the right” tone is a piece of cake.
The effects selection is just as sweet and includes options for distortion, filters, mods, delays, reverb, wah, gates, compressors, and EQ’s. Much like the amp panel, the effects panel allows for endless tweaking of an effects parameters. A wealth of classic and newer hard-core stuff to satisfy everyone’s needs. As an added bonus, POD Farm includes bass amps and some great sounding vocal preamps.
Navigating the amps and effects can be done using either handy drop-down boxes or from a “carousel” much like Apple’s CoverFlow. Once you have just the right tone, you can save the complete configuration for later recall.
POD Farm also provides dual-chains with independent inputs and (via the mixer) independent outputs. Each chain can have its own effects. With single-chain or dual-chain, you select the order of effects – all by dragging and dropping.
POD Farm is really two pieces in one – a DAW-compatible plugin and a standalone app. Used in standalone mode you can play to your heart’s content until you find just the right tone. Once you’ve found it, you have a couple of options if you want to lay down a track.
The first option for using POD Farm with your DAW is to utilize POD Farm’s record sends. You can access the Mixer tab and select the manner of routing you wish – send wet or dry to one of the record sends channels – and if you need a little signal boost there’s a +18dB button for that.
The second option is to use the POD Farm plugin directly from within your DAW. The process for this will vary of course – I’ll be adding a post on using Ableton Live and POD Studio soon.
GearBox
GearBox…where do I start. Let’s see. Custom guitar tones using a wide array of amps and cabinet configurations, pedals, effects, single-coil hum reducer, record sends, tuner, built in audio player with “half speed” option, online integration for downloading tones, lessons, tabs, a metronome…that’s a good start. If you are in the mood to just load up a tone and jam – then kick up GearBox and get going. If you want to nail a cool riff then kick up GearBox and locate the song online (there’s a good chance it’s there). Line6 GuitarPort Online interfaces very well with GearBox providing an integrated view of tracks (often including full mix/no guitars/no lead options), tabs, and even tones for many top guitar songs. The ability to grab all of these in one interface, load the tone, and start playing along is amazing.
GearBox’s amps and effects cover a wide variety of models. It provides a single chain, in preset sequence (gate-wah-stomp-cab-compressor-eq-vol-mod-delay-reverb), with record sends at top and bottom of the chain. The variations of each effect are extensive and include options like Vetta, chorus, flange, sweep, tape echo, and more.
The GearBox player provides basic start/stop functionality for downloaded songs or songs located on a hard disk or a CD. A nice feature is when you download songs or lessons from GuitarPort Online they are broken in sections (i.e. intro, bridge, chorus, etc.), and you can use the loop button and loop bar to focus your playing on a specific section (this works for other formats as well but you will have to identify the specific sections).
Conclusion
The POD Studio UX2 is a nice addition to a guitarist’s arsenal – if it included nothing else but POD Farm and GearBox the UX2 would be worth it just with that…but there’s more! In Part 2 I will cover RiffWorks, Ableton Live and Reason Adapted. Stay tuned!
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