Connecting amp modellers to audio interface

Gear
#21

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 :slight_smile:

#22

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.

#23

What kind of “horrible” are we talking about here?

#24

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.

#25

Have you listened to the headphone out of the interface?

#26

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.

#27

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… IMG_0113

The only older advice that might be applicable here is that cable quality is often the culprit.

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