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A Solution For Crappy Recording Quality


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I just spent almost a month troubleshooting my problem with recording from my POD UX2 onto my hard drive. My problem was that the recording sounded nothing like what was coming out of the monitors -- the monitors were nice and crisp and heavy and sounded good enough to be presentable, but the recording kep coming out fuzzy, muted, tinny, and overall just total lollipop in general.

 

So here's how I got around this issue.

 

1. I got some advice to record only the DRY INPUT from POD Farm. To do this, you have to go to your mixer on the standalone software (open it on its own on your computer) and set it to record dry input only.

 

2. use your DAW to IMPORT POD Farm so that you can run it INSIDE the DAW itself. What this means is that you'll be recording a plain signal with no amps or effects, then ADDING the effect on top of that plain signal.  Don't worry -- you can still MONITOR how it will sound by keeping the standalone software open.

 

If you're like me and you're too stupid to figure this out on your own, you usually have to find something in an effects or preferences menu in your DAW or a menu item called "plug-in manager" or something else with the word "plug-in" in it. That will lead you to a window where you can go to your C drive, find your Program Files folder, and open the line6 folder inside that and import all the effects in there into your DAW. I had to have someone hold my hand through that. There is just too much to understand about this stuff.

 

3. Don't use lollipop software. I tried using POD Farm running inside of a few programs before I tried Adobe Audition, and that was the first one to actually sound good. In Cakewalk Music Creator LE5 and the Reason software that came packaged with my POD, the POD effects always turned my signal to mud. In Audition, it's nice and clean and it actually sounds good. I can't recommend anything other than Audition for this since I haven't tried anything else.

 

So, there you have it. If you are having a hard time getting your POD UX2 to not sound like your guitar is plugged into a rusty old car muffler, try recording a dry signal into good software and then adding the effects you want after the recording is done.

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Not sure why you were getting muddy sound initially. I've not had an issue with my UX2 and PodFarm getting reasonably close sounding output. I've recorded wet with no real issues.

 

My main DAW is Reaper, but I've also recorded using Audacity.

 

Do think, however, that you are correct to record dry.... Can always add effects to the recoding.

 

I have had initial problems with quality, but, seemed to disappear when I used the UX2 drivers in my DAW instead of the Win 7 sound drivers.

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If you can, record both a dry signal on one track and your PodFarmed signal on a second track, this gives you the best of both worlds as you can monitor the sound you want as you record, but also go back and redo it on the dry trakc if you decide to.

Many people end up with a bad recorded osund due to the nature of the DAW softare - they may be recording the Podfarm sound, then running it through PodFarm again (as a plugin on the track) without realizing it.

Also:  when recording distorted/high-gain guitar, usually "less is more" - turn down the distortion/gain when recording and it sounds better on playback.

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