Owner's Manual

POD Farm 2 Advanced User Guide – Troubleshooting
9•9
Causes of excess noise or unwanted distortion and clipping
Noise and distortion? That’s what electric guitar is all about, right!? But if you’re hearing the bad kind
of noise or distortion from POD Farm 2, there are several possible sources and solutions, including the
POD Farm 2 amp, Tone and Monitor volume knob settings, sound card noise, guitar noise, and speaker
or audio system noise. Let’s run through each of these, and how it might be a part of your problem:
• Input and/or Output levels not optimal – It is a good idea to go through your signal chain and
make sure you’ve got all your components’ levels set for the best audio quality. Please see the
previous section - POD Farm volume/output level is too low. Also see the tips for optimizing
input levels for POD Farm 2 Plug-In on page 4•5, and for the POD Farm 2 standalone application
on page 6•7.
• Guitar Noise – It’s easy to nd out if your guitar or guitar cable is the source of your noise
problem. Just disconnect your guitar cable from your Line 6 hardware and see if the noise goes
away. If it does, try using a different guitar cable to see if the cable is the problem. If changing
the cable doesn’t take care of it, you may just have a guitar with noisy pickups, or your guitar may
be picking up electrical noise from your computer’s display or other sources. You can generally
reduce these noises with the POD Farm 2 Gate effect.
• Speaker or other Audio System Noise when using Line 6 hardware – It’s also possible that the
noise is occurring AFTER your Line 6 device, in your speakers, headphones, or other system that
you are connecting your device to for listening. If you’re using headphones, try another pair that
you own or can borrow from a friend to see if the headphones are the problem. If you’re listening
via multimedia speakers or other equipment, try connecting headphones directly to your Line 6
device instead to determine if noise is coming from the Line 6 device, or your speakers or audio
system. You may have the volume turned too high on the speakers or audio system, causing
distortion there. Also, try unplugging the cable that connects your Line 6 device to your speakers
or audio system, and see if the noise goes away. If it does, the noise is probably coming from the
Line 6 device or something feeding into it; if the noise doesn’t go away, it means that the speakers
or other audio system components are probably the noise makers. You should also try a different
cable to connect your device’s output to your system, to make sure the cable isn’t the problem.
• Noise complaints from your family and neighbors – Sorry, you’re on your own there.
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I still hear noise when the Noise Gate is on
The POD Farm 2 Noise Gate (as well as the Global Gate) will not completely eliminate noise, but will
reduce it considerably. Please see the information on the Gate to learn how to adjust its controls for
the best performance as you change Amp Models, pickups or guitars.
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USB Errors
If you are having USB communication problems with your Line 6 audio interface, the rst thing to
do is check your cables to make sure they haven’t been disconnected accidentally. If you have a spare
USB cable, try it instead to make sure the cable isn’t the problem. To follow are several items relating
to USB connectivity.