Line 6 Toneport range
Anyone here used any of the Line 6 Toneport range yet?
http://line6.com/toneport/
They do look real nice. There are a small number of mainly positive reviews on Harmony Central but nothing like hearing straight from the horses mouth so to speak. (Mr Ed)? LOL
It seems like many of the cheap interfaces are noisy or have software conflicts etc.
I want something that Im not going to regret buying especially as I will probably source it from the US.
Odub - I’m a hardcore Tascam user - when they say Zero-latency hardware monitoring that’s what you get. Compare that to ToneDirect monitoring unique, full tone low latency monitoring.
You get all the line 6 sounds though if that’s what drew you to it for effects.
For recording ease just starting out I’d go with the US122L.
Tascam US122L
I have the Toneport Line6 UX1 which I bought primarily to use for my laptop then ended up using with my desktop as well because it was so much quieter than my soundcard. I’ve been very pleased with it but have taken lately to using my Zoom H2 as my USB Interface - smaller footprint and I don’t have to have additional software running in the background (with the Toneport you have to have ‘Gearbox’ running.)
But then, I’m not really big on using the effects that the Toneport provides. There are a heck of a lot of them (and more available for purchase) and they sound pretty good, at least the ones I experimented with.
So, if you’ll use the effects I think the Toneport is a good choice. You may want to move up to the higher end unit (UX-2? Not sure…) My basic unit does not have phantom power - hasn’t been an issue for me (I feed in from my mixer which does have phantom power) but if you’re thinking of leaving a mixer out of the equation you’ll likely want something with phantom power.
Bill,
Im glad youve had good results with your Toneport. I guess you can bypass all the effects if you want to record your own amp/voice.
Quote: (One-way @ Mar. 17 2008, 5:43 PM)
Bill,
Im glad youve had good results with your Toneport. I guess you can bypass all the effects if you want to record your own amp/voice.
Oh yeah, absolutely. In fact, that's my usual practice.
That said though - I have used the provided effects when rendering MIDI to WAV. The basic unit comes with Vocal, Piano, Drum and Guitar settings that are superior to straight recorded MIDI files and I have taken advantage of those.
I just bought the TonePort GX yesterday. Taking it back tomorrow. Bear in mind I’m an analog nut- but good god the distortions are unuseable to me. I really just wanted some nice clean sounds but, nope, not happening either. Everything sounds like, well, Line 6. To each their own. To be fair the heavily processed patches w/ like 5-6 things going on sounded useable for what they were.
I have the UX2 and we record straight using just preamp models or with no amp/cabinet set and get pretty clean sounds? Did you try that?
Quote: (paintbox @ Mar. 25 2008, 10:46 PM)
I just bought the TonePort GX yesterday. Taking it back tomorrow. Bear in mind I'm an analog nut- but good god the distortions are unuseable to me. I really just wanted some nice clean sounds but, nope, not happening either. Everything sounds like, well, Line 6. To each their own. To be fair the heavily processed patches w/ like 5-6 things going on sounded useable for what they were.
Hear! Hear! Paintbox! Hear! Hear!
On another note: hey Poppa Willis, I bet you that even "zero" latency is not truly zero, and that I can prove it to your satisfaction!
Quote:
On another note: hey Poppa Willis, I bet you that even "zero" latency is not truly zero, and that I can prove it to your satisfaction!
Well Tom there's 'legal' claims and den der's 'subjective' claims.
But, zero latency “monitoring” is possible if it simply routes the analog IN back the the analog OUT without doing anything else to it. Zero being whatever latency a short analog circuit will have. They claim zero latency hardware monitoring, not zero latency through the digital I/O path. Now, going A/D/A will add some latency, even at very best.
The docs are indeed a bit misleading, if assumpions are made.
On the website Overview: "Record two tracks at a time with zero latency"
On the website Specifications: "Zero-latency hardware monitoring"
Marketing.
Quote:
Zero being whatever latency a short analog circuit will have.
That's the leg on which my argument was going to stand. IT takes time for the signals to pass down wires and through transformers and such.
I've been wondering about this in a more serious way, since when I do overdubs I've been thinking that part of the difficulty in getting a groove when compared to an actual band playing has to do with the ways that latency in the whole system introduces - in a way that we are not used to compensating for. We get used to it in bands or orchestras, we have techniques for dealing with the latency issues there, but I dunno about the "one man band" sort of recording a lot of us do.
On yet another tangentially related note, I was interested to learn that the older Mini Moog synths had about 10ms of latency. Seems like enough to throw off timing. Folks adapted. Very interesting.
You’re the only guy I know who probably considers the speed of light when he flips a switch. 
I just received a Toneport DI Gold Bundle as a gift.
I’m really liking it so far.
The Gold bundle has a gazillion sounds for guitar, bass and vocals.
I’ve played with several for guitar a few for bass and none, yet, for vocals.
There are several preamp models too, so you could use it that way if you like.
With the “D.I.” version, you can apply any effect that you want while your playing, but send a non-processed signal to your soundcard (or any audio interface) so that you can have that raw signal to tweak to your hearts’ content.
I just set mine up that way yesterday, so I don’t have a great feel for it yet, but I think this is the way I will keep it for now.
Without using the DI, the box can be used as your interface and soundcard.
You don’t even need to have a soundcard in your computer, but if you use it that way and record while using a model or effect, it is obviously recorded with that model/effect and you can then tweak it some, but you can’t totally re-amp it, you’re stuck with that sound.
I’ve only had it a few days, so I still have a lot to figure out, but so far it seems to be exactly what I was looking for.
rd
Yes Im happy with the range on Toneport so you must have a huge choice. Line 6 seem to be good with driver/ software updates online.