![]() Maybe you want a more compact setup for when you go on tour. Or maybe you want to be able to change the order in which your effects are connected to each other, quickly and without messing around with patch cables. Or you want to store a number of “presets” for different songs, to avoid having to memorise and quickly recall the correct positions for all those hardware knobs. Perhaps you’re even interested in taking your setup beyond guitar-only territory and syncing a virtual drum machine up to your looper, and having a play with some software synthesizers while you’re at it. The idea of using a computer as a guitar FX processor can certainly be a daunting thought if you haven’t investigated the possibility before, and you’ll likely have some questions like: What software should I use? What hardware do I need? And will it really sound as good? These more advanced applications will have to await explanation in future blog posts, but following the information in this post, you will easily be able to set your computer up to run a few guitar effects, and set them to be switched on and off with a foot-controller. ![]() The question of whether it will sound good is possibly your number one concern. Historically, digital guitar FX have frequently failed to achieve the sound quality of their analog predecessors. Distortions, especially, have often sounded artificial when created digitally. However, the technology has improved significantly in recent years, and while I can’t quite guarantee that you’ll arrive at a computer-based setup which sounds as good as your analog pedals in every way, it is no longer an impracticality to end up with something at least workable, and at best excellent in terms of sound. See the bottom of this post for some specific plugin recommendations. Many modern guitar FX pedals (particularly loopers, digital delays and pitch shifters) are purely digital anyway – they’re technically a computer, just a very low-spec, stripped-down one, set to perform only one relatively simple function. Your laptop, which you already own, is thousands of times more powerful, so it’s not hard to wonder: “Is there any way that I could just use my laptop in place of all these units that I keep spending $200+ on?” The answer is yes. Many common audio interfaces are completely unsuitable for processing live guitar sound because their “round-trip latency” (the amount of time it takes for your guitar signal to go into the interface, get processed by your computer, and come back out again) is too high. With the wrong interface, there will be a noticeable delay between you hitting your instrument’s strings and you hearing the resulting sound.Īudio interfaces also vary in terms of the smoothness with which their drivers allow your computer to process audio in low-latency configurations. One audio interface might allow you to run hundreds of plugins simultaneously without problems, while with another you might notice audible crackling while only running a few as your CPU struggles.įortunately, the good folks at DAWbench have put a number of modern audio interfaces to the test under a variety of conditions. ![]() Their latest tabulated results are viewable here. (It should be noted that these tests were done on Windows, with the interfaces’ Windows drivers. Unfortunately I don’t know of any equivalent collation of data for Mac, but the optimist in me suggests that the results should be similar… hopefully.) PLOGUE BIDULE VS AUDIOMULCH WINDOWS
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