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Trying To Make A Basic, Cheap Setup - Would This Work?


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Hi everyone.

I have a preety good PC with a decent sound card (running kX drivers) connected to an old but good NAD amplifier and that is connected to a pair of nice columns. Note, that none of this is equipement deisgned to work with electric guitars.

My goal is to use the computer as a guitar amp and play through that - sending the signal to the columns. Recording would, at this point, also be possible, but at my skill level it's really not important. :P

I've purchased a JTV-89 with the hope that it's USB interface would let me do that - that is, send the signal to the computer so I could listen to the guitar live (if not add amp effects, but I can sort of do that with the kX drivers). Alas, I didn't read the fine print, and the Variax has no such functionality. :( Thankfully, I can still return it.

Still, the guitar, with it's wide range of instruments, is quite awesome so if possible I'd rather try to get this to work in the way I want, rather than give up and send everything back.

The product page for the POD Studio GX mentions recording the most - something I don't need all that much. Again, what I want is just getting the sound to my computer so I can use my existing sound setup and play the guitar (so I'm guessing low latency is a requirement). Would a POD Studio GX allow me to do that?

 

If not a POD Studio GX, then what else would I need to get things going?

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nad amps. i bought one in 1988. still use for my tv. nice tight sound with my polk bookshelf speakers. when i first bought the amp and my friends saw it, they hadn't heard of nad. so one of them ribbed me about it and asked me, "what;s nad mean, not always dynamic?" haha.

 

My goal is to use the computer as a guitar amp and play through that - sending the signal to the columns. Recording would, at this point, also be possible, but at my skill level it's really not important

i would think you have to ampllfy the signal from your computer to the speakers

 

if you have time go to the products manual page and check out some recording hardware. go to the top of the page and click suppot

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Well, that's why I asked if a POD Studio GX specifically wouldn't be sufficient.

 

My guitar teacher, being the awesome person that he is, let me borrow his POD Studio UX2. So I finally got to hear my guitar at home (of course I played it during the lesson - no shortage of amps there ;) ).

 

Here's where things get weird, but I feel I might need to ask around on the kX forums.

 

The POD works great... assuming I plug in a pair of headphones directly into it. This is... not ideal. I want to route the sound through the PC and out via the NAD amplifier. I can set up Windows 7 to "Listen to this device" in the sound options of the UX2 recording device, but there's a notable delay there - not a problem for recording as such, but not suitable for playing. If I go to Tone Direct setting and set the lowest latency, the sound drops completely (I have no idea why this is - I tried this on my laptop and it worked fine, but my laptop is older and weaker than my PC).

 

I can also select a kX ASIO device in the POD Farm preferences, but I'm unsure how to use use that yet. :(

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By using the USB interface with the ASIO drivers, you do add a noticeable degree of latency for live play, which is why the analog/line-outs, with "Tone Direct"  are preferable for live play/monitoring situations.  I use the ASIO drivers strictly.

 

I have been using a UX-2 as my PC input device for years without noticeable latency.  The GX can work just as well using the line-out.  There are two ways to make this work for you:

 

1.  Take the analog outputs/line out and feed them to the aux in of your PC's sound card (which is what I do)

 

-or-

 

2. Attach the analog outputs/line out directly to a powered speaker system (this is usually what Line 6 recommends, but I disagree)

 

Note that with the first option, you want to keep your PC's sound card as the default output device, and make sure that the aux input is enabled.

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nad amps. i bought one in 1988. still use for my tv. nice tight sound with my polk bookshelf speakers. when i first bought the amp and my friends saw it, they hadn't heard of nad. so one of them ribbed me about it and asked me, "what;s nad mean, not always dynamic?" haha.

 

i would think you have to ampllfy the signal from your computer to the speakers

 

if you have time go to the products manual page and check out some recording hardware. go to the top of the page and click suppot

brain fart

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By using the USB interface with the ASIO drivers, you do add a noticeable degree of latency for live play, which is why the analog/line-outs, with "Tone Direct" are preferable for live play/monitoring situations. I use the ASIO drivers strictly.

 

I have been using a UX-2 as my PC input device for years without noticeable latency. The GX can work just as well using the line-out. There are two ways to make this work for you:

 

1. Take the analog outputs/line out and feed them to the aux in of your PC's sound card (which is what I do)

 

-or-

 

2. Attach the analog outputs/line out directly to a powered speaker system (this is usually what Line 6 recommends, but I disagree)

 

Note that with the first option, you want to keep your PC's sound card as the default output device, and make sure that the aux input is enabled.

Oh... I can certainly do that. I was under the impression that outputting the analogue signal and sending it back to the PC would be... kind of pointless and weird.

 

If all it takes is reconnecting the whole thing with an extra cable, then I'm game! :)

 

But I'm curious - what are the ASIO settings inside the POD Farm software for? I've been playing with ASIO in general for the past hour or so - first, I had issues getting any sound at all (I'm using a nifty ASIO test sound generator I quickly found via Google). Fiddling in kX drivers I managed to hear said application. But, subsequently, the POD software doesn't seem to remember that I want to use the ASIO in the settings.

 

Again, if all it takes is an analogue cable to connect the POD to the line-in on my sound card, that's fine - I'm just curious at this point.

 

EDIT: Is there any difference between using the analogue out and the headphone output on the POD Studio?

 

EDIT 2:

Actually, that probably doesn't matter. What I have is borrowed - I'll likely buy the Studio GX, and that only has a single output. :)

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