Community: Message List

Re: Tone Direct?

support@line6.com — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:55:54 GMT

Yeah, I'm starting to think it's just the PC recognizing the USB input as an audio device and routing to the UX1 that way as it's set as the default souncard. That got me to wondering how it all works when I do run Pod Farm or similar and also wondering about just how this Tone Direct is supposed to work and what it really means.

L6 offers suprising little documentation on the hardware itself, everythign is Pod Farm documentation so I couldn;t find much to better explain it. I do recall seeing the above somewhere before when I was shopping for an interface but now that I have the UX1 it just trying to understand it better.

Thanks for your help!

Re: Tone Direct?

support@line6.com — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:53:59 GMT

The issue and questions don't really concern the computer's on-board soundcard, and aren't so much about computer generated sounds as with the guitar/instrument input. It (the UX1) is already configured as the default soundcard; that part I am familiar with. What I am not clear on is with this setup,

a) Does/should there always be guitar/inst. output from the UX1 outputs even when Pod Farm, nor any other modeling type software is running?

b) If it does then how does/is it supposed to function when Pod Farm IS running, i.e. what is output, dry signal, wet signal, both? Does software then take precedence over the direct tone feature and override it with the software's output? Is it then down to confuguration within Pod Farm, i.e sending either the dry or wet signal as selected?

In a nutshell, I just don't understand what "Direct Tone" is, or how it does or is supposed to function.

Tone Direct?

support@line6.com — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:41:02 GMT

I don't fully understand the functionality of the tone direct feature of the UX1 and haven't been able to find this answered here in the forums or anywhere in product documentation. Could someone please describe how it functions, or is supposed to function?

I have a new PC and my UX1 now seems to have output to the monitors (and I'm assuming this is the intended tone direct functionality) of the guitar without having an instance of Pod Farm running. This is not how it worked (I don't think - as I often launched Pod Farm anyway I'm not 100% sure) on my old laptop and addtionally on occasion it does not work this way on the PC either. Without explanation it just sometimes has sound out (of the guitar/instrument input that is), sometimes not and then I have to launch Pod Farm to get the output of the guitar to the monitors again.

So all this has me somewhat confused as to how this is supposed to work and if there is always intended to be direct output of a dry signal, how it is supposed to function when Pod Farm is running, etc.

Re: ASIO4All lower latency than Line6 driver for UX1?

support@line6.com — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 01:00:48 GMT

Another question. Is the UX1 supposed to have output to the monitors w/o Pod Farm running i.e. guitar sound out? On my new PC it is behaving that way, or at least it is sometimes and I cannot figure out why or what the behavior is supposed to be. Usually that is how it behaves on this PC but there have been occasions where it has not (requiring Pod Farm to be run to get sound). No documentation that I can find on this and now repsonse to the support ticket I opened several days ago so any help here is appreciated.

Re: ASIO4All lower latency than Line6 driver for UX1?

support@line6.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:34:51 GMT

Yes, and that is the confusing part - I thought if I ran PodFarm as the plugin I'd still have the tonedirect monitoring output to the speakers but I don't.

Re: ASIO4All lower latency than Line6 driver for UX1?

support@line6.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:19:26 GMT

I'd say if they don't have a Windows 8 driver (and they don't - just one that is this far reported to work with Windows 8) it's reasonable to ask if they have one in the works and if that might improve performance under Windows 8.

You're missing the point entirely... It's not about releasing a driver to recify an issue that "only exists in an unsupported environment" it's to rectify one running in a supported environment obviously: Lone6 UX1 with Line6 ASIO in Windows 8

Re: ASIO4All lower latency than Line6 driver for UX1?

support@line6.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:16:29 GMT

I noticed the latency I was hearing was gone; that's when I looked at the numbers but the numbers themselves I know don't tell the entire story. I can hear the difference though; the latency is no longer noticeable (to my ears) when using the ASIO4All drivers.

I also don't understand the tone direct - I have a support ticket open looking for more explanation on this. When using the UX1 via reaper I get no sound unless I select to monitor the guitar track but I thought the whole point of tone direct was that it output sound without going through the recording chain. To get around this I have to run Pod Farm stand alone, which maybe is the intent but I thought if it was running, it was running and there should be the tone direct output regardless of whether running stand alone of as plugin.

Re: ASIO4All lower latency than Line6 driver for UX1?

support@line6.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 21:21:13 GMT

It's just an issue with monitoring the guitar and hearing the delay. So for now, my workaround is to run Pod Farm standalone (see above post) since that is the only way I can hear the guitar without monitoring the track in the DAW.

Re: ASIO4All lower latency than Line6 driver for UX1?

support@line6.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 20:07:04 GMT

Yes, weird that I have posted since 43462 - LOL

Now, as for all the replies and in-fighting. Interesting, but not particularly helpful or useful. And for the record Silverhead, I did not ask that Line6 support their products' use with non-compliant drivers nor did I ask for any support on using my UX1 with ASIO4ALL. What I asked was why/how I'd be getting better perfromance (lower latency) and if it's something to do with the current Line6 drivers that might be addressed with a future update, thinking it could be Windows 8 specific for example.

So again, while all the posts here are interesting (or entertaining at least), none really address explain the poor performance of the native drivers from Line6 vs. the ASIO4All drivers, nor answer the other questions. "Because it's a hack" doesn't answer the question about why the native drivers are putperformed for example, but they are. And "no" there won't be drivers released (not sure how you know that unless you work for Line6) to improve latency is I guess an answer but not really an explanation or in any way helpful.

ASIO4All lower latency than Line6 driver for UX1?

support@line6.com — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:50:32 GMT

I just got a new PC for audio (i5-3330 quad core, 6GB RAM, Windows 8) and ran into some latency issues. Using UX1 and Reaper I'm getting about 18ms round-trip at the lowest buffer setting of 128. Tried several tweaks and adjustments in Windows but couldn't get any better latency numbers. I decided just for the heck of it to give the ASIO4All driver a go. I was surprised (and a little disappointed) to find it outperforms the Line6 driver, even with the buffer set as high as 512. Drop it down to the same 128 and I get 7.2ms round-trip. That's less than half of what I get using the Line6 driver.

This is good news on the one hand since it tells me I don't have any real latency issues with the PC but disappointing on the other that it's the Line6 ASIO drivers that appear to be the source of my latency issues. The problem then becomes that the ASIO4ALL driver doesn not recognize/support the 4 inputs/sends availabel from the UX1 so using it improves performance but reduces featues. No more recording guitar and vocals simultaneously for instance.

My question is, why/how is it a generic ASIO driver able to outperform the Line6 native driver, and by such a wide margin? Is this an issue with using Windows 8 and we can expect updated Line 6 ASIO drivers soon to rectify this/improve performance? IS there anything else to consider here? I just find it odd that Line6's own drivers for their hardware are so much poorer wrt latency than a generic ASIO4ALL driver.