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Using Podfarm With Pod Xt/x3 Hardware Or Tones


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So for those who have used gearbox and pod XT or X3 in the past ,here are some tips to making the transition of your tones to podfarm or using podfarm. this will also include using farm to enhance your tones and moving them back to your Pod XT/X3 hardware for standalone.playback.

 

First, let address the volume difference using pod XT as an example:

 

XT is a standalone unit obviously that runs on 9V DC and 2 amps, POD farm using GX for example is 5V DC and USB interface, which is .5 amp...quite a bit of difference. As such, what you might notice is that sounds in gearbox moved to farm are about 2/3 lower in volume. Yes you can move the volume up to 10 if your tone was 3.3 but who has there dialed in tone at that :)...it's just not a good formula.

 

Next is to see what farm can do on its own to raise that level without too much coloration. the first thing to do is EQ and when that is not enough, the cleanest pre-amp can be added, which I found to be the coucel. I played with this testing over a weekend for hours and hours and will share what I found to be the best setup for trying to match output as it was in gearbox XT but without adjust volume as much as possible

 

What I will show is how to start from a baseline and make volume changes only after you have exhausted all other options. If you find these settings add some small coloration then drop the settings equalty across all EQ bands and instead go after the master volume. You can also increase volume on your amp, but this is to get the tone the same through headphones so its as true to start as possible.

 

Here are the tips:

 

If your old XT/gearbox tone is a single path (which it should be, you can open that in farm and duplicate the track (doubles the volume 100%) this should get you really close. I feel that to absolutely match, you need to have 1 path get an EQ adjustment at the end and a preamp after the amp in the chain. 

 

 

see below screen shot for how this looks for your newly added preamp and EQ added to 1 path for additional boost. Circled in yellow is the additons that pod requires to help boost where the old tone was.

 

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Settings for preamp and EQ are as follows:

 

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The next scenario I will describe:

 

When you have two tones you really like and you want both in pod farm so you can merge them and mix each for best of each.

 

In the case below I enhanced my "A" path tone which was darn near perfect but lacked what the tone in path "B" had. They are merged by letting Path "B" run through 10% and then 90% tone "A". 

 

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Here you need to have a different setting for the pre-amp because each path is different and not a copy of the other. 

 

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Next is a tip for those that want to:

 

Bring a setting into farm and want it back out for XT.

 

Well remember that XT can not handle multi effects of the same type nor duel paths so you have to merge the two if that is the case. This may not end well, you need to choose the settings that represent the best of your new pod effect in 1 path and no dulicate pedals. You can only have 1 amp too...so the challenge is to toggle back and forth and see if you can represent in a single path of what two paths were giving. note: the different settings on the sine chorus

 

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Now the track down to 1 with sign chorus settings that represent all 3 as you can only have 1 in gearbox. Here I am merging former track "B"

 

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and finally the settings on the sine chorus as best representation of having 3

 

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Maybe line6 will make a pod that can support the duel path of effect but until then you are going to have to do this or find a way to run from a tablet or something so pod is what you use live or you just live with a good enough scenario

 

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The last thing I wanted to mention was  the option to use a hardware boost to simulate the tone of XT. I have not purchased yet as it will add a clean boost up to 18DB for some but will run about ~$120.then, you don't have to fake it with an EQ or preamp in POD. This would be the cleanest purest way to boost but again will require a purchase. For the purpose of this post i am showing how to do it with the tools you already have. Note for some FX you may want to make sure POD sees all your model packs or can read the FX others have made with those model packs 

 

For that those that have wondered about running through the XT with the  effects bypassed, the fact is you will get some static and it will add something to the tone. You are basically reprocessing it and pod is not clean when using this was through farm via ASIO (and with input as "Send Clean guitar".

 

send_clean.jpg

 

 It's not horrible, but expect some static and less bass or warmth IMO.Your best bet is to use GX or UX-1 and amp your tone with effects in farm. 

 

I had to do a lot of back and forth comparison, and I will not claim this is perfect but is as close as my ears could detect without having to purchase additional boosting hardware. Even if you decide to boost buy buying some hardware, it's good to know to do it in software if you need it.

 

Hopefully this gives others some incite to tone building and porting from favorite gearbox tweaked tones you may have had. I am still playing around with PODfarm and no doubt I will discover even more, but so far are impressed with the extra options I am getting. 

 

Be nice to have it really working with XT full to make adjustments with real knobs as opposed to a mouse and arrow keys, but oh well.....like I said maybe line6 will do something in the future with a next generation POD that really works close with farm as an interface and a tone transfer for standalone.

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