Hi Angus, and no problem - I had exactly the same help given to me when I first got my UX2 and was experiencing similar problems!

Just to clarify the difference between using POD Farm in 'Standalone' mode and as a 'VST plug-in':

Standalone

• You open POD Farm from the Start Menu or from a shortcut and it operates completely independently of any other program on your PC (it can be the only program open on your computer). You simply open it, plug in your guitar and you're good to go.

VST Plug-in

• Although ostensibly the same interface as the standalone version, the VST version can only be operated inside another audio program capable of 'hosting' it. In this respect, it is the same as the audio effects that came bundled with your X1 Essentials.
• To see which VSTs you have available, open X1, insert an audio track and switch to the Console View, right click inside the track's FX Bin and hover over the Audio FX link.

• Which VST effects are listed, and how they are sorted, can be customised at any time if you select Utilities > Cakewalk Plug-in Manager

The only real differences between the GUI of the standalone version and the VST version appear up in the top left. The standalone version has the name of the program next to the POD Farm icon and displays the 'Tone Direct Monitoring' logo. The VST displays the 'FX' icon and also shows details of which track in SONAR it is located:
 
 
 
In operation, they do behave quite differently though.
 
As you already know, you can select a preset in POD Farm standalone, plug in your guitar and play - you will hear your guitar being played through the amp and effects loaded in the preset. If you arm a track in SONAR for recording and select Left ASIO POD Farm UX2 Send 1-2 (for mono recording) or Left ASIO POD Farm UX2 Send 1-2 (for stereo recording) as the Input for that track, SONAR will record exactly what you are hearing from POD Farm.
 
By way of contrast, the VST version of POD Farm is usually used to process guitar audio that you have already recorded. The best way to use it in this way is to record a completely 'dry', unprocessed guitar track into SONAR. Note, you can create dry/clean guitar tracks in SONAR using your UX2 by recording through a completely empty signal chain (i.e. no amp, no cabinet and no effects). I've even created an 'Empty' preset to do exactly this:
 

 
 
Once you have your dry recorded audio, you can then insert the VST version of POD Farm into the FX Bin of that track. As you play your project, you will hear the processed sound of the guitar track as it is sent through POD Farm. The beauty of this method is that you can change the presets and effects in the VST as often as you like, your dry signal is never altered. However, when you export (i.e. mixdown) your project, the processing will be applied to the exported signal.
 
However, a lot of guitar players (me included) don't really care for recording their parts completely dry. It's nice to hear some processing to help you get the 'feel' for what you're laying down. SONAR does allow you to do this while you're recording by routing some of the signal through the VSTs you have loaded in the FX Bin. To switch this feature on, you have to click on the Input Echo button on the track you've armed.
 
You can either switch Input Echo on in the Console View:
 

 
 
Or in the Track View:
 

 
 
The only problem with using Input Echo is that there is a delay in your hearing the processed signal (hence the 'Echo' in the name). How long this delay (also called 'Latency') is depends mostly on how efficient your computer is at processing the sound. Generally speaking, the faster your PC, the lower the latency. On really quick machines, the delay is almost unnoticeable. On slower PCs, the delay might be too distracting for you to record comfortably with.  


My old Windows XP computer was very slow and only had 180MB of RAM. I remember I used to get a lot of pops and crackles from my UX2 as the PC just didn't have the speed and processing power to run it efficiently.  
However, the biggest problem I had with it occurred when I switched to a Vista machine with a much faster processor and 3GB of RAM. I just couldn't get it work, either in standalone mode or inside SONAR. As I was quite new to all this DAW recording, one of the guys in here walked me through it step by step, and disabling my PC's onboard soundcard seemed to be the key to getting it working.

As I mentioned before, I just disabled the Realtek card in my newest Windows 7 PC as a matter of course before installing the UX2's drivers.
 
As to removing POD Farm (1), there is no need. In fact, you will lose all the presets that come with it if you do.
 
Let us know how you get on when you disable your onboard card.
 
 
 
 
 

  Wow! Thanks again. :) Right, well - the good news: I've not really messed with FX yet in Sonar, but I got a Pod Farm reverb up and abusing some guitar that I recorded the other day, so that side is looking good. Less good news: I disabled both my M-Audio card and Realtek on board sound, set the UX2 as default sound, rebooted and..... the crackling was no better - actually, it seemed a little worse. I downloaded and re-installed the drivers again, but with no effect. I've seen suggestions for getting a usb pci card which might provide a better usb connection? Is there an easy way of checking there isn't a hardware problem with the UX2? Bother! Anyway, thanks again and have a great weekend.

_

 
At somebody's suggestion I tried a downloadable tool called DPC Latency checker to try and understand what's going  wrong between Sonar and my UX2:
 
 
  http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml
 
 
 
When I had the UX2 connected, it said there serious problems with the latency, when the UX2 was disconnected it said the pc was fine. There then followed a rather embarassing episode where I successfully disabled my mouse and keyboard, and could not access my pc, until I connected a PS2 mouse and got in via safe mode......
 
 
Anyway, the DPC tool suggests its highlighting the problem, (when I played a Sonar session on the UX2 the DPC red graph latency bars went through the roof - but I'm not quite sure what to do next - I would appreciate any thoughts on how to proceed from here. Cheers.
 

I too use a UX2 as my interface. SteveStrummerUk has been extremely helpful on this thread, but he's overlooked one of the most powerful features of the UX2, which is the capability to record both wet and dry at the same time. Open your POD Farm from outside of Sonar. Choose a tone. Go to the mixer tab. Note that on the right there's Send 1-2, plus Send 3-4. Note that be default Send 1-2 shows 'Tone A' and Send 3-4 shows 'Dry Input'. This is the key to everything. Now open Sonar. Add 2 audio tracks and arm for recording. For the 1st track, choose UX2 Stereo 1/2 as the input. For the 2nd track, choose UX2 Stereo 3/4. Now hit record and play something. When you play back, what you should get is: Track 1: WET. The same thing you heard when you were playing. Track 2: DRY. The dry version of same - no tones, effects, amps, whatever. So if you're happy with Track 1 you can keep Track 2 muted and continue working the song. But if you want to change it later, mute track 1, un-mute track 2, and add the POD Farm to Track 2's FX bin. You can now change amps or whatever to anything you like. So, what you're getting is: --The ability to record live, hearing direct tone monitoring as you play (with no latency); --The ability to change the tone after the fact. Just be careful of your levels. Many tones include a compressor, which may require that you have different levels for wet and dry when recording. To summarize: --Use the stand-alone external POD Farm for initial recording, but be sure to record both Wet and Dry signals; --To change sounds after the fact, add the POD Farm plugin to the FX Bin of the Dry track. Hope this helps. My apologies for the lack of carriage returns in this message. The Forum software has stripped them out, despite numerous efforts to put them back in.