Line 6 Toneport UX1 (and UX2)

Well, I finally got my hands on a Line 6 Toneport to review. I asked them to send me the UX1 since that’s the cheaper model. Zzounds has it for $130, which is pretty cheap for what you get. More on that later. [Zzounds also has the UX2, which includes VU meters and phantom power.]

I’ll be reviewing this in several installments, primarily because I only have so much time each night to play around with it. I know many of you are in the same boat, so the time constraints I’m under might make the review even more relevant.

First Impressions:
The Toneport comes packed with two cd-roms discs and a USB cable. The Toneport itself is plastic and slightly larger than I expected from the pictures I’d seen. It’s light and while it’s sturdy enough for home use you would not want to use it live or in a situation where it might get dropped. It comes with LRF support [that’s Little Rubber Feet] so it won’t go skidding off your desk.

Installation: The CDs are clearly marked, the first says “Install this software before connection your hardware!” Well ok then. I did. This installed Gear Box. The installation software told me when to do what. The only confusion was that when I tried to “upgrade and configure Line 6 Monkey” it asked what hardware I had but didn’t give me Toneport as an option. So I skipped that step. It didn’t seem to make any difference. Everything worked fine. I then installed the second disc, which has a “lite” version of Ableton Live 4. This is multi-track software that also allows looping of wave or midi files, sort of like Acid or Garageband.

Gear Box:
The Gear Box software is where you change the sounds coming through the Line 6. So far I only tried it with an electric guitar plugged into the Instrument jack. This gave me many amps, cabs, and effects to play around with. When I got a combination I liked, I could save it with a descriptive name. The really nice thing about this software is that there’s a little help window on the bottom. Whatever you hover over with your mouse, the help window will give you useful info regarding that knob, setting, or whatever. This made playing around with it very fast and intuitive. I had no trouble figuring out the software without looking at a manual. [Note: there is no paper manual, it’s all in the software and help menus.]

You monitor with headphones plugged into the front of the Toneport. Volume is controlled with the Output knob on top. This does not effect the record level, which can be viewed on the VU meters in Gear Box. There’s also a built in guitar tuner.

Once I’d saved a few amb/cab/effect combinations, I was anxious to try out Live.

Ableton Live:
Live is a program I’ve heard mentioned a lot, but never used. Although I’m a diehard N-track user, I’m always ready to try something new. Unfortunately, I only had time to go through the first tutorial in Live before it was time to close up shop for the night. Tomorrow night I’ll continue from where I left off. I will say however that within a few minutes I was recording a guitar track to the installed backing tracks and the whole thing sounded great.

= = =

So as I mentioned above, I got in a little time this morning to play more. I actually started reading the Help file for Gear Box to see if I’m missing anything important. Yup. I didn’t realize I could use a mic and guitar at the same time. Very cool. As pointed out above, there’s no phantom power for the mic; for that you need to get the more expensive UX2 rather than the UX1. I already have a preamp with phantom power, so this isn’t a big deal to me, but it obviously makes more sense to just plug into one unit.
Here’s what the UX1 looks like:

I should mention there’s a lot of info on their website at http://line6.com/toneport/ , including videos showing it in action.

Anyway, setting up a preamp and effects for the mic was easy, and I had a little jam session with the guitar effects and mic sounding great through headphones. I then explored the presets for guitar and vocals. As with the PS-04, some presets are completely over the top, but do a good job of demonstrating what’s available. Other presets are very usable without tweaking. But you will want to tweak, and it’s very easy to do so. Your changes happen in real time as you “twist” knobs in Gear Box. Playing with the sounds was inspiring a lot of musical ideas and I had so much fun playing around I was a little late leaving for work. Tonight I hope to dig in deeper into Ableton Live 4 Lite. Or is it Lite Live 4? 4 Live Lite? Anyway, it’s limited to 4 tracks, which obviously isn’t practical for long term use, but is good for getting started. It has built in tutorials and the first one I did was very easy.

And that gets to my overall impression so far. Line6 wants you to dive in and play with this thing. They walk you through each step from installation to playing around with the software. I think they do a great job of making it very easy to start playing and start learning at the same time. They also do a fair share of selling along the way. There are upgrade packs for the Toneport they would love for you to buy, and an upgrade to Ableton Live too. I noticed some of the negative reviews on Zzounds related to this issue. From my perspective it’s not a big deal. Out of the box this thing is loaded with 6 amps, 24 speaker cabinet models, and 24 effects, which should be enough to keep you busy and happy for a long time. If you want more, they’ve got them for sale, but I don’t think I’d ever need more than what’s already there.

As for the Lite version of Live, I didn’t really expect any multi-track software at all, so a free demo is fine by me.

Here are the specs on the UX1 from their website:
· 6 classic and modern amp models based on POD®xt
· 24 speaker cabinet models based on POD®xt
· 5 must-have bass amp & cab models based on Bass POD®xt
· 24 studio and stompbox effects
· 1 Mic Input
· 1 Guitar/Bass Input
· Stereo Line Inputs for your line out level gear
· Stereo Line Outputs via two 1/4-inch jacks
· Stereo Monitor Input via stereo 1/4-inch jack
· Headphone Output
· Pro Audio performance with over 100dB signal-to-noise & dynamic range
· ToneDirect monitoring unique, full tone low latency monitoring regardless of recording software's buffer size
· 44.1 & 48KHz, 16 & 24 bit recording
· 96KHz mode with built-in sample rate conversion for simultaneous input and output
· USB-powered
· Rock-solid Drivers: ASIO, WDM, Mac OS X
· Includes Ableton Live Lite - Line 6 Edition recording software
· Mac OS X and PC compatible!

= = =

N-track; my first problem – pops and clicks; fixing the problem:

Well, playing around with Live was fun, but as mentioned, it’s basically a demo since you’re limited to 4 tracks. So it was time to use the Toneport with my multi-track software of choice, N-track. I changed the settings in n-track so that instead of my Soundblaster Live! card the Toneport was now the audio hardware for recording and playback. That caused N-track’s record VU meters to now show four tracks. Four? Yes, and here’s why. Toneport’s effects are in stereo, so that’s track 1 and 2. Track 3 and 4 allow you to record without effects. For each effect you have the option of placing it before or after the track 3-4 send. So, for example, let’s say you want to record a vocal, and you want tons of reverb in your headphones to inspire you, but you know that later when you’re mixing you might decide the Grand Hall reverb is a bit much. No problem. Put the reverb after the 3-4 send in Gear Box. Record all four tracks. Track 1-2 will be the stereo recording of what you heard in your headphones, reverb and all. Track 3-4 will just be the preamp but no reverb, so you can add different reverb with a plug-in later or leave it dry. This is very very handy.

But now we get to the first problem I encountered with the Toneport. I recorded a little guitar track (well, four actually) and it was stuttering and popping and cracking. It sounded like N-track just couldn’t keep up. I futzed with the latency and buffering settings, both in N-track and in the ASIO settings. Same problem. I tried just recording track 1 and 2. Same problem. I recorded 1 and 2 to one stereo track. Same problem. More futzing around failed to solve the problem. Finally, I decided to switch from using my D drive to my C drive as the one that holds the temp files. Magic! Now I could undo all my previous futzing and record with no pops and cracks. So the real problem was just that my D drive was too darned slow. My C drive is a brand new Western Digital EIDE 250 gig hard drive I got at Best Buy for $90. Grab them while they still have this deal. It’s much faster than the D drive. So, it wasn’t really a Toneport issue after all.

Ok, sorry for that sidetrack. Anyway, I got everything working fine and recorded all four tracks simultaneously without any problem. It was cool having the choice of listening to the take with and without effects.

Summary:

That’s pretty much it for the review. I’m going to try to record some demos this weekend so you can hear some of the things this box can do. I’ll post them in this thread if I get them done.

I originally wanted to try out the Toneport when I saw the ad in Tape Op and checked out the website. I’ve been looking for a better way to plug in to my computer than my current setup, which is a bunch of cords patched together in back of the computer, all going through a stereo mini-jack. The Toneport promised to replace that mess with a cleaner interface, and add some valuable new tools to my existing set up. So did it fulfill the promise? Yes. I’d say it actually went beyond my expectations in one area, and that’s user friendliness. I’m becoming a broken record on this point, but it does bear repeating. This thing was designed by people who want you to make music, not bang your head against your monitor wondering why there’s no sound. As someone who has spent many hours figuring out hardware and software, I genuinely appreciated the time Line6 had put into saving me time. All software should be as easy to learn and use as Gear Box. As for sound, to my ears it sounds great. It’s very easy to dial up a sound that inspires you musically and gets you off on a new creative path. That’s also something I love about the PS-02 and PS-04, but they definitely take much more learning time before you get to the creative playing around time. For anyone who wants an interface that's hard wired to the computer for recording straight in and quickly capturing ideas you get when you’re in your home studio, this is a great solution at a very fair price.

[Note: this review was originally published at the 2090 Zoom forum]