Small But Powerful
If you are a guitarist/bassist/vocalist in need of the very best USB audio recording interface that you can buy (without needing a second mortgage or selling body parts for medical experimentation!) then this is it. Way back when trying to get a decent sounding demo meant a trip to the studio or borrowing a 4 track, I heard tell of the now ubiquitous POD, which turned AMP modeling into totally viable professional recording solution.The POD Studio range is the next logical step, converting your analogue signal into crystal clear digital audio, processed with your favorite amps and effects, directly into your recording software, almost noiselessly and and with near zero latency. Basically, having your cake, eating it and having it clean up after itself. The POD Studio GX has a single 1/4 inch input for a Guitar/Bass/Mic input, a single 1/8 inch stereo output (for Headphones or output to powered monitors/mixing desk/amp and monitors) and a volume control. For anyone about to embark on recording yourself, the one thing which usually makes this process painful is latency. This is the delay between when you hit a note and when you hear it monitored back. This, unlike many other devices, is just not an issue for the POD Studio. Don’t know how it works, don’t need to, it just works, so there is no pain!
POD Farm
At the heart of this little miracle is the ultra cool POD Farm software, which you use to create your preferred sounds. This ships with all the POD Studio family of devices so you are totally not losing out on anything, especially the killer tone, that you get with all the POD Studio devices. That said the bigger brothers also ship with the FX Junky model pack, this increases the stomp box models from 29 to 64, but in reality how many of you own even 29 stomp boxes?
What you do get is 18 guitar amps with 24 cabs, 5 bass amps with 5 cabs, 29 stomp box and studio effects and last but not least 6 Mic preamps. There are a bunch of built in presets but you can build literally limitless combinations of amps and effects, you can even choose to Mic up a cab, choose the Mic and set the distance from it. My very favorite thing is that you can split the signal and run it through 2 separate amps and effects to get those dynamic tones the big guns use.