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Yes, both mono quarter-inch outputs are mono-capable, so if they are the only one with a cable plugged in, the X3 will sum both stereo channels to that single mono output. The manual states this clearly.

Sorry, but what are you actually asking? Is it actually related to panning as the title implies? Yes, you can use Tone 1 and Tone 2 as an A/B switch, effectively doubling the number of single Tones you get from 128 (32 banks * 4 letters) to 256 (32 * 4 * 2 Tones). This feature was apparently added in an early firmware update, version 1.11, rather than being enabled from the beginning, although I struggle to imagine how Line 6 could have forgotten that initially. Just set the two Tones up to have the same Input, set up the signal paths you want in each respectively, and make sure only one Tone is enabled (read: do not hold Tone 2 to activate Dual). Now the Tone 2 footswitch toggles between the two. Also, the aforementioned firmware update added the much-requested preservation of delay tails when switching between Tone 1 and Tone 2, although still not between separate entire presets. As you said, if you had tried this, you would quickly have proved that it is possible. I still have no idea why you mentioned panning in the title. You could pan the two Tones opposite ways and thus A/B them between different mono outputs, but your post itself makes no indication that you want to do this.

Your first reply implied that you had encountered the problem with a variety of USB audio interfaces, which I took to mean by both Line 6 and other, unrelated companies. It also made it seem like this was a Windows-specific problem known to other users. I was hoping for links to other discussions that would provide a lot of information that I could compare to my own experiences and possibly solutions that I could try. The new post makes it sound like this is something that you personally have encountered with gear by Line 6, and like it is not something other users have verified as a problem with Windows and USB audio on a generic level. It sounds more like two bad USB buses/chipsets. Can you confirm or correct any of this? I thought we were onto something, but now I am nowhere near so sure. I do appreciate the help, but hopefully you can understand what I mean here. This sounds more like your bad luck with hardware than a verifiable problem with Windows. The latter would have taken a lot of weight off my shoulders. I was going to post the results of a couple more tests I have done since last time, but I need to re-do them to make sure there was no interference from other things/coincidences, because some of the results are very strange if they turn out to be true.

This is interesting. Thank you for the suggestion. To be clear, you mean that, once the POD seemingly crashes, I should try using another application that communicates using ASIO only, and if it can still find the POD, it means the problem is caused by Windows/Microsoft? If so, I might not have ever tried that, so I will test it out next time. [edit] But… as I said above, I have encountered what seems like the same problem, plus with intermittent gaps in played audio, on another computer running Windows Vista. So I might be a bit pessimistic that this can all be blamed on a new problem in Windows 7. Are you sure it was only introduced in 7? [/edit] [edit 2] More generally, do you have any links to detailed information and/or discussions about this supposed bug? I have never heard of it and cannot find much on a search, so I really want more info in order to assess whether it might be relevant to my problem. [/edit 2] Actually, the POD seemed to work flawlessly for almost two weeks using both DirectSound and ASIO. However, just as I was starting to feel more optimistic, it crashed again like before.

Thanks anyway. You’ll excuse me if I’ll have to meditate for a while to build up the will to contact Line 6 again about this. I dare say I’ll do it eventually, but I’m not setting my expectations high next time around. Do they still read threads ever, or will I have to go and copy and paste all of this into another location? I don’t know how many times I can face repeating the same explanations.

Just what I didn’t want to hear. So, it seems I am indeed SOL, as they say. Sorry, but I don’t see how there’s any ambiguity. In the interests of being even clearer, though: One would hope so, given that I sent it to Line 6 themselves and that I explained the problem clearly and made plenty of references to the lifetime warranty and exactly the behaviour that I was experiencing. Twice. Not that I’ve noticed, but this one seems to be the biggest of them all anyway. One is a desktop; the other is a laptop. The desktop has a port or two that simply don’t work with any devices, but needless to say, that’s not a confounding factor here. The laptop has never presented issues with any USB peripheral. Sure, but thanks to what you said initially in your latest post, I’m leaning back towards this being a problem with the POD. Yep, I thought of this too. The front ports on the desktop can be temperamental, but the others are fine on both the deskop and laptop. The POD X3 intermittently pauses on the laptop, too. But everything I’ve tried, everywhere, has ended in a disconnection sooner or later. Recording speeds the process along especially fast. Example: I just had the POD playing sound fine for over an hour. I went to record something at the same time. Guess what? It dropped the connection within a minute, then crashed the Volume Control, and finally crashed the recording program. Just the usual, then. Useless. What am I going to do with this lump of electronics? Accept Line 6’s sage judgement and accordingly spend the rest of time looking for ways to blame myself for the problem?

Are you saying that the fix should make the X3 work with all chipsets and that, therefore, the advice on that page about trying a card because some USB chipsets don’t work with the X3 (or other devices, since it seems to be written generally) should be inapplicable to my problem? I presumed, rather, that some chipsets might always cause problems, with or without the (supposed) fix. If you’re saying that presumption was wrong, then I don’t expect to make any progress by buying an add-on card. In this case, I hope I’ve misunderstood.

Hi silverhead, and thanks a lot for your reply. The repair was done directly with Line 6 at Butlers Leap, UK. I guess I will try it out with a USB card soon. Like I said, I’ve had a lot of trouble believing it could be an eerily similar problem with the USB buses of both computers. But I know I can’t rule it out until I’ve tried a card. For all my talk about using the scientific method to test this earlier, I concede that I didn’t cover this angle. But I’ve explained why, and I hope my reasoning is understandable. You’re right that I’m frustrated. However, maybe I should have been more accommodating of the chance, however small, that both the computers might be exhibiting flaws that function equivalently where the X3 is concerned. I know I have to test that before being conclusive. For those reasons, I acknowledge that the title of this thread and the tone of my initial post might be too conclusive and accusatory, and I’ll consider amending them. I thank silversight for being accommodating with my frustration and hope other readers can understand. The reason is that I’m only just recovering from the massive disappointment of earlier today (because, as I keep saying, I love this unit—in theory) and starting to consider less obvious nuances, such as the slight possibility of it being a problem with both the separate computers that I’ve tried, which just happens to behave exactly like the documented bug. Either way, we’ll see how it turns out in the end. I’ll post back once I’ve tried a USB card. I hope I don’t have to confirm my original title! :/ Even if that does fix the issue, which is still a very open question and is a method that was never suggested to me by Line 6 directly… who should then be blamed for the incompatibility with various built-in USB buses? One cannot buy a PCIx card to add a new bus to a laptop, after all, so it’s hardly practical. Is this honestly just a case of computer-builders using bad chipsets, or is there anything Line 6 could have done to be more compatible with whatever flaws they supposedly have? Anyway, thanks again.

No, and just this moment before checking back, I re-read the guide to USB problems and realised that they recommend that we buy USB cards, not hubs. Still, how likely is it that the internal USB buses on both of these computers are broken in such a way that the problem exactly resembles the X3-specific USB dropout problem? And how likely is it that they could be that way without producing any problems even remotely resembling this one with any other device? To be fair, I can’t absolutely rule this out as I haven’t yet bought such a card and therefore invested any more of my money in this extremely irritating problem (if I’m not misremembering, I had to pay for the outgoing postage on the first RMA!). However, I have severe doubts that it would change anything, especially due to the coincidences that I mentioned above. Maybe I will buy and try a USB card once I can face turning the X3L on again, but I’m reluctant to do either at the moment, for the same reasons.

(I’d like to make it clear that the spurious capitalisation in the title was added automatically by this forum, not me, because I’m not illiterate.) I had to send my POD X3 Live back to Line 6 for a second time because the USB audio drop-out bug had not been fixed by their first attempt. Especially recording, but also playback, will eventually lose the connection to the computer and cause it to lock up whenever it tries to reacquire the X3 Live, resulting in crashing of music software and later an inability to shut down as the system tries to find an audio device that no longer exists (even though it is still plugged in). Sound familiar? Well, I got it back today. And look what I was told on the paperwork: What, am I imagining that this issue occurs on two separate computers, one of which HAS just had the drivers newly installed for the first time ever, and with various different recording applications running various different I/O protocols, controls that I already specifically put in place because I’m not a total idiot and know to test things properly before reporting them? I have no idea how stringent your ‘soak test’ is, but it apparently is not good enough. And neither is your reply here. Yes, I have performed a factory reset and re-flashed the firmware, too, before anyone throws yet another platitude at me. As expected, these did nothing. What next? ‘Try buying a new USB hub’? Anything to shift the blame onto me, I guess. This is simply not good enough. I was told on the phone that I might be given a new motherboard. If you were so confident that there’s no problem with my current one, why not just shut me up by giving me a new one anyway? It’s not like you’re doing anything else with the surplus of boards you presumably have. The POD X3 Live is a fantastic device on paper. A shame, then, that it doesn’t work in reality as it claims to on paper. And it’s even more of a shame that you apparently can’t be bothered investigating this properly, instead trying to secure plausible deniability of guilt by defaulting to the old method of questioning the other elements of my setup and, by extension, blaming me for the problem.