Live 6 and Line6 Gearbox-Plug-In

petrucci4711 · Post by **petrucci4711** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 9:13 am

Hello Gents

I am a guitarplayer and I bought Live 6 and use also a Line 6 Tonport UX2.
The Toneport UX2 came with a software "Gearbox". I could record directly into the Live6 and it was great.

Than I found out that in Live6 is a "Plug-In" functionality and that I could buy a "Gearbox-Plug-In", which I finally bought on the Line6 website for $199.
I thought this would be much cooler, directly working in Live6 with the Gearbox-Plug-In, to safe resources not having Gearbox software open up in the back.

Now my problems:
1. I have 3 Gearbox-Plug-Ins-visible (Mono/Mono-Stereo/Stereo)
and do not know which is the right one to choose
2. If I choose the Gearbox-Plug-In, I can see the Amp and setting but I
dont hear a sound. Only if I press "rec" button on an audio track and
select "IN" instead of "Auto", but than I only hear my guitar with a delay.
3. By open up the Gearbox-Plug-In the Live6 become slow in action and
CPU show about 30%.

Can anybody explain or share your experience with the GEarbox-Plug-In
and how to setup the right setting, so that I can record directly in Live6 with the Gearbox-Plig-In wihtout opening up the Gearbox software additional.

Thank you in advance
sorry for my bad english, I am from Germany

Kind regards
Markus
www.guitarplayer24.com

xrayfish · Post by **xrayfish** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 11:14 am

As I understand it you can do it this way:

The plug-in version is always going to give you a delay because of latency, unless you have a really fast computer. You could try reducing the latency in Live's preferences, but it will make your CPU meter go even higher and may not get rid of the problem altogether.

However you can play without latency if you use the Gearbox software (not the plug-in) by directly monitoring your toneport.

While you are doing this, record the clean signal into Live (sends 3 and 4 set to the beginning of the Gearbox chain ie before any FX or amps). Set the 'Audio From" on your chosen track to receive this signal, and mute the track while you're recording or you may hear it twice.

You now have a clean guitar signal recorded into a clip.

Now to recreate the guitar as you played it, open the Gearbox plug-in on the track where you recorded your clean signal. Choose the same settings on the plug-in that you used on the original Gearbox that you played through, and it should sound the same.

You can now mess about with the settings inside the plug-in version and change the sound as much as you like.

Hope this helps. I have a guitarport which I tink does the same job as your Toneport, though it has fewer inputs. I don't have the plug-in version of the Gearbox software, but what I said above is how I understand you do it from reading the PDFs on the website.

I'm also using a Mac which allows you to aggregate (combine) all your soundcards into one device. (You may need to choose your toneport as the preferred audio device if you're on windows, I don't know anything about that)

nordmach · Post by **nordmach** » Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:57 pm

Hey xrayfish!

Haven't purchased the Line 6 deal yet. But I was wondering how many of the Line 6 plugs can you run at once? I found the website sort of confusing in regards to this. Is it only 1 instance of the plug? Or mulitple?

Thanks!

xrayfish · Post by **xrayfish** » Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:14 am

I don't have the plug-in version of gearbox, but if I did I should think I could run it on as many tracks as I liked until my CPU fell over. It costs an extra £100 and AFAIK just duplicates what you already have, but as a VST/AU plug-in with all the flexibility that goes with it.

So I just run the gearbox app that came with guitarport (or to be precise, that I downloaded from the website) and record that.

Because you have 2 stereo outputs (send1+2, send 3+4) you can set up live to record them individually.

1+2 is what you're hearing

3+4 is either the clean signal or the pre-FX signal, depending on where you choose to put it in ithe signal chain.

So you can record what you're playing AND the 'dry' unaffected signal at the same time on 2 different tracks

If you later changed your mind about the tone or FX you could in theory send the dry recording back to the gearbox using real cables (connect audio interface out to jack in) and re-record it how you like.

If you splashed out for the plug-in version as well, you could do it all in software with no restrictions. But that's too high a price for me, maybe if it was half as much I might consider it

Not sure how many instances of the plug-in a G4 would run either - I'm using an intel minimac but as I say I've no experience of using the plug-in version of the software.

Of course if you're really loaded you could look at the silver and gold plug-in which costs more but give you a shedload of extra amps and FX.

Hope this helps

nordmach · Post by **nordmach** » Wed Feb 14, 2007 8:02 pm

Thanks a bunch for the info!!!!

So (sorry more Q) could I just purchase the FULL plug-in from Line 6?
Right?

Thx
cb

xrayfish · Post by **xrayfish** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 10:49 am

I'm not sure what you mean by the *FULL* plug-in

when you install gearbox it also installs line6 monkey (!)

this allows you to buy extra amps/FX for the standalone gearbox and also the plug-in version seperately. I don't know if the plug-in version you get only has the same amps etc that you already have in your standalone gearbox app, or extras as well.

I also don't know if you have to have guitarport / toneport actually connected to make the plug-in work, I suspect you do, in which case it will just be a big dongle! So you probably won't be able to get just the plug-in without buying the hardware first.

You may be able to run the silver/gold plug-ins without the hardware but again I don't have them and don't know.

Not much help I'm afraid, you'd probably best check with Line6 before committing yourself.

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 12:26 pm

I've just recently started using Gearbox Gold bundle. What a superb armoury of effects ... Shoving vocals and drums through amp models is superb fun in addition to all the other wicked modulation, delay and reverb effects. Lovin it.

xrayfish · Post by **xrayfish** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:10 pm

I've just recently started using Gearbox Gold bundle

Can you run it as it is or do you have to have line 6 hardware attached at the same time?

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Thu Feb 15, 2007 4:23 pm

xrayfish wrote:
I've just recently started using Gearbox Gold bundle
Can you run it as it is or do you have to have line 6 hardware attached at the same time?

The ToneDirect hardware box is the dongle ...

Unplug it while running and Gearbox Plugin stops working (however audio will continue playing through the plugin but effects will be bypassed). Reconnect it and it starts working again.

You don't have to use it as your audio interface if you've already got more elaborate audio interfacing however if you want to take advantage of Zero Latency monitoring through Gearbox effects then the hardware box is superb for the purpose.

Cheers

chris_dan · Post by **chris_dan** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 4:18 am

I asked some questions about the TonePort Plugin in the Line 6 forum. I think that the following may shed a little light. For the record I have a TonePort UX2 and I'm not impressed by the upgrade price of the plugin. In my opinion it's like paying for the unit again.

The following was taken from the Line 6 TonePort Plugin forum........

A couple of questions:

1) Do you know if the hardware must be present for the VST tones to function?

Yes, but it doesn't have to be being used as your input device. It CAN be but doesn't have to be, but does have to be present. So you can stick it under the desk and forget it's there if you want.

2) Have you purchased the upgrade yourself?

I've purchased it and I feel like it is a great little product. I'm not thrilled about the cost or the dongle aspect, but honestly, it really has made even the one project I've been working on a lot more fun and satisfying to me than having to commit to the tones ahead of time. Mostly, I stay with what's recorded, but it's nice to be able to not only record with delay and verb but get just the clean track, but also to be able to sculpt some of the sound "as if it were at record time" and then do some additional polishing with other plugs. I'm enjoying it.

3) Is there any limit as to how many instances of VST patches that can be used at once?

In reference to the above I would imagine that system resources would govern how many instances could run at once before sonic output is affected.

4) While on that topic have you found a limit to the "how many" question and if so what's your basic system config?

You can run as many instances as your hardware will support. System resources definitely make this determination. You CAN freeze your effects in some sequencers (like Sonar) so that you can basically have an unlimited number going, within reason, I suppose.

I have been able to run 12 simultanious loaded up stereo versions of the plugin at about 2.9ms latency without issues. I was at about 80% cpu at that point, but this was an experiment to find out exactly this. In a real project that has a number of guitar parts and vocal parts with Gerabox running on each, with latency at a respectable and usable level (like <20ms for mixing) I sit around 35-45% CPU. I'd guess that there are 6 or so gearboxes running along with a multiband compressor on a stereo mix of drums, and a few delays and verbs thrown in as well. I've generally found that the Gearbox adds about 6% per instance on my system.

I DO have a pretty nice system - Core2Duo 6400 on Asus P5B with 2Gb of RAM, using an Echo Layla3G as my primary soundcard in Sonar 6.2 Producer edition.

5) When used as a plugin does Gearbox comply with standard plugin control from a control surface or midi sequence? I know that the TonePort patches can be changed via midi but not by standard Program Change. One must first dump the sysex code for the desired patches to a file and then read in the file at the predetermined time in order to have the TonePort respond. Very convoluted but doable none the less. Hopefully they've addressed that issue with the plugin version.

I know that in Sonar, if you enable the Writing of automation data, it will write events for the gearbox controls. It also allows you to choose whatever parameter to you want to automate from the envelopes available. For example, I just said to create an envelope controlling the amp model, drew a diagonal line from center down and played it back and the gearbox happily sat there and scrolled though the available amp models. Very not-useful in this case, but proof of concept, nonetheless. As far as a control surface - don't know, haven't tried yet with the behringer bcf2000 because I haven'r t found a need yet - just easier to control onscreen in this case for me - I used the BCF in Mackie Control Mode, so plugin access is a little wierd.

nordmach · Post by **nordmach** » Mon Feb 19, 2007 2:25 pm

Thanks a lot Chris_Dan!!!!
This was exactly the info I was looking for!
Thanks for the post!

Novel · Post by **Novel** » Wed Mar 14, 2007 5:43 pm

jasefos wrote:if you want to take advantage of Zero Latency monitoring through Gearbox effects then the hardware box is superb for the purpose.

Can you achieve 'zero' latency monitoring via Toneport when using Gearbox as an in-line plugin within Ableton Live?

jasefos · Post by **jasefos** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:13 am

Novel wrote:
jasefos wrote:if you want to take advantage of Zero Latency monitoring through Gearbox effects then the hardware box is superb for the purpose.
Can you achieve 'zero' latency monitoring via Toneport when using Gearbox as an in-line plugin within Ableton Live?

Good question - I'll have to test this out for myself when I'm next seated in front of my studio rig.

Cheers !