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Line 6 POD Farm 2
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Line 6 POD Farm 2

Software Amp Simulator from Line 6 belonging to the POD Farm series

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« Modeled Gear You Won't Find Elsewhere »

Published on 12/06/12 at 09:22
Line 6 Pod Farm 2 is a software product that can either be used as a plug-in in a DAW or as a stand-alone application. I upgraded to Pod Farm 2 from Pod Farm 1 from Gear Box. Authorization is available with iLok if you purchase the software new rather than upgrading. I purchased the software with the Gear Box interface, so I have to use that as a dongle. It is kind of annoying, but it was cheaper for me to upgrade this way rather than upgrade to the iLok.
It is really easy to get started with the software when you open it up. Line 6 has updated the graphical user interface, so it is easy to drag-and-drop gear models into the signal chain.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I haven't come across any bugs in the software. It can be pretty CPU intensive if you load a munch of gear models across all the parallel processing chains.
Something that I like about the software are the plug-in 'singles. When I am tracking guitar into my computer, I want to run my DAW at a low-buffer setting (32 samples) to reduce the monitoring latency. Monitoring with a dry, direct guitar signal just doesn't sound natural. The full version of the software can be too CPU intensive for my machine. I usually just pull up the Pod Farm Amplifier single plug-in because it is light on CPU for tracking. Then I switch over to the full version of the software during mixing (at higher-buffer settings, 1024 smaples) or one of my other amp sim plug-ins.

OVERALL OPINION

The are many choices available for amp sim software (Guitar Rig, Amplitube, Eleven, TH2, Revalver, etc). At this time, the modeling algorithms used in Pod Farm 2 are not state-of-the-art, as Line 6 has released 'HD' modeled amp sims in the POD HD line. Pod Farm 2 is basically a software version of the gear modeled for Pod XT and X3. The main reason I keep the software around is because there are so many more gear models available in Pod Farm 2 than any other software or hardware POD available. Pod Farm 2 has models of Matchless amps and Diezel amps that I don't find anywhere else. Even some of the Line 6 custom amps (Big Bottom) are unique enough to keep around. Hopefully, Line 6 gets around to modeling of this gear using their HD algorithms soon. I'd happily upgrade again, even if I have to keep the stupid Gear Box interface dongle.