Oh good call. The Scarlett solo only has one input…not sure how that works in this scenario
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Does using a DAW to set up stereo playback work for just playing and not recording?
You need two inputs on your interface to record in stereo. I’d forgotten that you mentioned you were using a Scarlett solo. If that is a single input only then you wouldn’t be able to record your stereo fx. You could record without the stereo fx and run them, in stereo, in your DAW, via a plugin.
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Just looked it up and it sounds great! I’m gonna try the free trial later and see how it sounds with my setup 
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You will have multiple outputs on the scarlett solo, so you’ve got a route for left and right speaker. Inputs though, yeah…you just have the one. A traditional approach for stereo would be like an acoustic guitar where you have 2 mics. Or a guitar cab that has multiple mics. I have always recorded “ampless” using a mon input. For rx I use a “send” where I have a track specifically for say, delay and reverb, and I route the “sends” to various instruments to this track. You can control the amount of what gets sent for wetter vs drier but it’s a nice pattern and also should save a little processing
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I did the free trial and never looked back. Do make sure you download all the free presets from their site. The “Drive thru” and “rat pack” have some really nice presets in there. The best thing for me about s gear is it feels like you are playing a real amp still
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I honestly think it depends on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to make demos and record songs, I wouldn’t use fx at all, and record dry. All the grease is usually added in post, and it gives you a lot more flexibility after the fact. You can do this by affecting the each individual track if you want different effects and settings on each, or by creating different busses for a group of tracks that will get the same effects with the same settings. And even a master buss for the whole track. You won’t be able to monitor these in real time during the recording process though.
If you are trying to have a quiet practice rig, record instagram, tik tok, or you tube vids, then yes use the fx all you want.
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Thats not technically stereo though, more tandem from a mono source. You could kind of fake a wider image due to delays between the sound source and mic proximity, but you also run the risk of phasing issues between the mics. You can fake it even further by delaying one capture a bit, but for true stereo you need two different performances two different sources.
The general purpose of double micing a cab is usually done to blend the characteristics of two different mics, two different speakers, to manipulate and add depth to a mono source or a combination of all. It’s not usually done to sort of fake a stereo field but to add depth to a mono one.
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Yep, thats all I’m just considering expanding my current practice rig
In that case I second Joe’s recommendation for S-gear, it’s amazing. The beauty of using plugins over outboard modellers is that your computer records the dry signal, any time you want to make changes you just change the settings in the plugins. One other amp sim I really like is the Bogren Amp Knob, it’s $40 and has a fantastic EVH type sound at lower gain settings.
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All of the above advice sounds great, but I have one question: Why directly connect to the Scarlett? If your laptop is nearby, why not connect the modeler directly via USB and have your DAW record “wet” and “dry” versions of your playing, and then mix the wet guitar with the backing track (presumably pulled into the DAW) and then feed that to the Scarlett to drive your powered speakers, PA, or whatever it is that you’re looking at?
PS: Sorry if I missed something.
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I was refering to using a modeler as something for practicing with, not recording (I apologise as I didn’t make this clear in my original post )
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I tried this idea and it sounded horrible. I connected my POD X3 to my Focusrite Scarlett, thinking perhaps I would get better recording quality, but the sound I heard through the headphones was awful.
The POD itself is an audio interface. I don’t suspect it’s meant to connect an audio interface to an audio interface.
All the leads on this I recorded plugging a POD X3 into a Focusrite Scarlett. I’m biased since it’s me, but I don’t think it sounds horrible. There are places where I’m a little out of time and some bends that are pitchy, but I think the tones good.
All the early Periphery demos sounded really pro and Misha Mansoor used a POD (possibly XT as it may have been prior to the X3). Shortly thereafter he switched to Fractal, which of course sound better than. Still, he got great tones out of that POD.
It’s all about the settings I think though. When I quit my band ~2010 I hired Misha to give me a crash-course in home recordings and he made me some POD presets.
FWIW I’ve never made any patches on the POD that sounded anywhere near as good as what Misha made me. None of them sounded horrible though. I’d double check your input settings. If you clip on the interface itself, it’s gonna sound bad. You don’t want the output of the POD too hot either. Also, there are headphone jacks in the POD as well as the focusrite. Which were your headphones plugged into? There can be lots of little gotchas.
I still like S-Gear better than the POD, and it’s cheaper too
I’m not saying patches you make sound horrible. The X3 has an awesome JCM800 in it. Way better than what you will find in a Fractal or a Helix.
But when I followed the directions on the Line 6 forum from a guy about how to connect my X3 to my Focusrite Scarlett, the sound was horrible.
What kind of “horrible” are we talking about here?
The sound was weak and thin if I remember correctly. Can’t totally remember about the noise, but there may have been high noise too.
Have you listened to the headphone out of the interface?
Really cannot remember. I did this experimenting quite a while ago when I first got my Scarlett. I also inquired about is there a difference between recording through SPDIF vs. USB. I posted a question about this on the Reaper forum (I use Reaper as my recording software).
Most everyone said to just continue to hook up my X3 to my computer using USB. There is no better quality using SPDIF.
I have always thought that the sound I hear through my headphones live when I am practicing or recording sounds better than the sound I hear when I playback my recording using Reaper.
But it’s slight. Not so big it’s really objectionable.
But what I do now since the quality of amp plugins has really improved is I record not just my wet track but I also record a dry track.
And then I put an amp sim on the dry track. Plus things like EQ and delay and doublers.
By the time I’m done adding those, my final guitar sound is quite good.
I’m very old school so my I tend to troubleshoot from different sides of the signal chain. Once it’s in a DAW, my know-how has become pretty much nil lol I always used the DAW as a tape machine that could be edited far easier than a real one. But I usually wasn’t the one that did the editing. I didn’t really bother with plug-ins either. They were insanely expensive in my engineering days and I had a lot of the real thing. I miss this little control room… 
The only older advice that might be applicable here is that cable quality is often the culprit.
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