Guitar Software: Questions & Suggestions?

depends on your budget... and your computer.

Garage band works fine if you have a mac.

Assuming you don't, top hit on google for "record guitar software" was

this and it has several options that are rated highly on Guitarists.net, fwiw.

If you have a budget, you can get an interface like an mbox that would come with some semblance of ProTools LE or something.

That said, I have an older Tascam 4 track that works great, and as soon as I convert all my tapes to digital it's for sale. cheap. Should happen before the Apocalypse, and if not, hey... what are ya gonna do?

 

I have the M-Audio Fast Track Ultra USB 2.0 pre-amp. It came with a Pro Tools M-Audio version. The set-up works really well imo and you can do anything you want recording-wise. If you don't like that, then you can get other free recording software. It does a nice job for the price. Whatever you do...don't go lower than USB 2.0 if you go USB.

At present when I want to play guitar. I just go through my pre-amp and output to studio monitors. I run through a Digitech GNX 2 effects processor as well. It works good enough for a practice set up.

 

I have a related question I guess.
I've been playing for a while, but never with an effects pedal, and I've only used my laptop mic to record since it's just for fun. But now I want to get an effects pedal, as well as record to my computer but I don't know anything about this kind of stuff.

Do they make effects pedals that can connect straight to my computer via USB, but with the option of connecting to an amp as well?

For example: http://www.digitech.com/products/Multi-Effects/RP90.php
Couldn't figure it out from their site, but can I connect this to my pc via usb?

or maybe I'd have to go one step up with this kind of thing?
http://www.digitech.com/products/Multi-Effects/RP155.php

If they don't make a combined unit, then is my best bet to get one of the M-Audio preamps and an effects unit separately?

 

Typically, effects floor units don't provide the interface to hook directly into your computer (e.g. using USB or Firewire). For example, most multi-effects units will send out a Left/Right output and the PC wouldn't be able to take those (except if you bought an M-Audio or other quality sound card that could accept Left/Right inputs or an Instrument line-in). You could feed a single instrument cable into a PC...but then you would be putting the burden of producing the sound on your PC and sound card (i.e. it would sound like crap most of the time with an average sound card assuming it could accept the instrument line-in). An exception to this appears to be the RP155 you mentioned...as it has a built-in USB interface for doing so. There are various ways to hook stuff up, however, so I cannot speak on all these points. I think typically one would use a pre-amp to both feed the computer the audio signal for recording purposes and also feed the audio signal to studio monitors, a mixer, etc. for the live audio and recording playback . Ideally, you don't want to hear your live audio through the PC speakers if you can avoid it. The big thing is you don't want lag between you playing your instrument and the time it takes to hear what you are playing. You need a feed you can hear when you're playing while recording...which can be from monitors or even a simple headphone hook-up directly from your pre-amp or effects board even.

Per my config, my guitar feeds into the effects processor and the Left/Right outputs from the effects processor go into my pre-amp inputs. The pre-amp then feeds the audio signal into my PC via USB and to my studio monitors via Left/Right outputs from the pre-amp.

There are two basic configurations for hooking an effects unit to a guitar amp. One, you feed the guitar to the effects unit and then output to the amp. This is pretty common. If your amp has an effects loop, then you can hook your effects unit into the loop. The basic difference is when the effects from your unit are applied to the signal...either before the amp colors the sound or after the amp colors the sound with its own signal processing.

As for what meets your purposes, that is entirely up to you, your budget, etc. . I think it would be cheaper to go the RP155 way but it would be doubtful it would yield better results than if you went with a decent pre-amp and effects unit. There are also the handheld recording units with built-in microphones that might be worth investigating...if you just want to record the audio coming from your amp or feed the guitar signal directly into the device via an instrument line-in. The RP155 is a viable option to look into for just basic guitar home recording...assuming it meets your needs in the effects department. The other good thing about a pre-amp is it is not limited to just guitar recording. You can feed other instruments and vocals into it at the same time (I think I can do four at the same time on mine). So, you could record tracks separately one at a time, you could record you playing guitar while singing at the same time, you could mic an amp capturing the amp outputted sound, or even record the entire band on multiple tracks playing at the same time. So, the pre-amp gives you more options in this regard.

Read some user reviews on whatever direction you end up going and decide what is best for you! There are a lot of options so I know it can be difficult making a decision. I'm by no means an expert on these things...just trying to help you out with some advice on stuff I've learned along the way.

 

Thanks very much for that post! It clarified a lot of things.

I've decided that it's worth going for a reasonable quality set up, so I'm looking into the m-audio preamps with 2 lines-in e.g. the MobilePre or the Fast Track Pro. It's going to take some review reading but they look pretty interesting. The effects unit is less important to me so I'm delaying that until I'm a little more familiar with what's available.

 

I've used GuitarRig and it is awesome.. although it doesn't work as well as it should because my computer is old and sucks. But even at that, it sounds pretty good.