Recording - April 2015 - 60
B Y M I K E M E T L AY
Line 6 is best known for its guitar products; the POD portable guitar signal
processor rewrote the book on recording
guitar into a DAW and spawned hundreds of imitators over its long and storied lifespan. That's not the only arrow in
Line 6's quiver, though; the company also
offers live sound equipment, digital mixing tools, and a wide variety of computer
recording products with clever and userfriendly features.
This time around, we're taking a look
at the newest interface from Line 6, the
Sonic Port VX. It's a comprehensive audio
solution for PC, Mac, and iOS devices,
whether you want to record guitar/bass,
vocals, or stereo line-level signals. We'll
also take a quick look at the new Mobile
POD app for iOS.
Line 6 Sonic Port VX and Mobile POD
A comprehensive iOS and USB interface supercharged with a great guitar app
Sonic Port VX
The Sonic Port VX has a lot going on: it
features both mono and stereo microphones, a 1/4" Hi-Z guitar input, stereo
minijack line-level Aux input and
Headphone output, and 1/4" TRS balanced line-level outs, all in a compact
enclosure about the size of a conventional side-address condenser microphone.
The Sonic Port VX can lay flat on a table
or be mounted on a mic stand with the
included mounting hardware, and interfaces to a Mac or PC via USB or to an iOS
device via Lightning. It's bus-powered;
when you hook it up to an iOS device, the
60
RECORDING April 2015
USB cable can be connected to a power
supply to charge your device while using
it, but it doesn't need a power supply to
work. It comes with two interface cables
and a small tabletop mic mount with a
thread adapter for use with a conventional
mic stand.
Controls include a 3-way guitar/mono
mic/stereo mic switch (the mono mic setting also activates the guitar input for
simultaneous recording), a Direct Monitor
switch for zero-latency monitoring, and a
Gain thumbwheel for the mic capsules.
There's no control for the headphone output level; that's done from your iOS
device, and you'll want to check your levels before you put on your cans, because
the amp gets really loud.
When set up as a mic on a stand, the
Sonic Port VX can be switched to use either
its center-mounted mono capsule or the
two outward-facing capsules for stereo
recording. This arrangement is unusual;
the two capsules are nearly coincident,
separated by less than an inch, and face
outward. So it's neither an ORTF (capsules
several inches apart) nor an XY (capsules
crossed) array. As a result, stereo imaging
is very wide, to the point where the phantom center can be a bit lower in level than
Recording - April 2015
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - April 2015
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