Longer Than It Should Have Been

I spent several hours yesterday trying to get the TonePort UX2 to work with software that I could use. It comes with some weird application that I just couldn't figure out. I had tried getting it to work with Deck, but had no luck. Deck didn't recognize the TonePort at all. I did get it to work with GarageBand okay, but it would only record one track at a time (the UX2 supports 2.)

So yesterday I checked through the Line 6 online forums and found a few interesting things.

1) someone asked if you can record multiple tracks at the same time in GarageBand, to which another person helpfully replied; Yes.
2) Other users recommended Tracktion from Mackie

I also discovered that there was a software update for the TonePort's software.

Armed with this information, I set about trying to get this all figured out last night.

The first thing I tried was updating the UX2's software. I had to register to download the software, and I was having network problems so it took a looong time to download the software. I mean a looong time. And then after I installed the software I discovered that it didn't solve the problem. Deck still didn't recognize the TonePort at all.

Then I tried Tracktion. Took a bit of figuring to get it to work with the TonePort, and I wasn't exactly thrilled with the interface. Also, the demo version plays an audible noise every few seconds just to be super annoying. I gave up after a while.

I then went to take a look at Bias's support, on the chance that maybe they had something about using the TonePort (nope) or that their forum might have something.

I had to find my product serial number to get into the forum. And when I did, I discovered a notice about there being a problem with Deck and Tiger (which I had to upgrade to when I installed the TonePort's software *sigh*) The notice said you could work around it by creating an Aggregate Device through Audio MIDI Setup. Insert a couple of hours of mucking about here. Long story short; discovered that the reason it wasn't working was that Deck doesn't support 24bit devices (i.e. TonePort.)

Then it occurred to me that I was using GarageBand 1.0 on the Mac, and I had a copy of GarageBand 2.0.

Sure enough, installed GarageBand 2.0 and discovered that it added a record button to each track; ta da!!! Now you can record to two tracks at once.

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What did we learn from this? Not much other than the fact that what could have been solved in 15 minutes actually took me more than half a day.