redscott

Hi mayhem13, you know you are totally correct, mic'd speakers from a valve amp within a insulated room of some sort would be ideal, but for the moment I don't have an ideal budget, nor have I much experience with recording, I agree with bluesman that simulation software doesn't sound exactly like the real thing, it misses warmth and responsiveness, for the moment im just looking for a first time set up, get used to good DAW and plugin software. My main aim is to have fun with it for now, maybe think about a more pure set up in the future. I have learned alot from this tread already and im looking forward to get things going.

Hi Eloise, yeah thats the traditional method of recording guitars, although its vastly impractical for me, I am after a variety of tones and fx, many many non professional guitarists use standalone units which they record directly with (axe fx, pod hd pro, eleven rack) and the ones without so much money tend to use dedicated guitar software via a soundcard or firewire/usb interface. Both these options open up so many tones and fx's, where a mic'd amp is very limited when on a budget, not only do you need a decent valve amp but you also need many fx pedals, the cost adds up very quickly, and also if you don't have a conditioned room to mic up in you are wasting tone very quickly, something else which is costly. Unless you go to an actual studio micing up amps for recording purposes really isn't efficient without having many thousands of $/£ to spend.

Thanks guys, this has been exceptionally useful to me, I the main thing I was stuck on was trying to have a "one fit all" solution, I want both a practice amplification solution and to dabble in recording. I think I will still use an audio interface for both recording and practice but amplify the signal in different ways for recording and practice, so I will get some semi decent studio headphones for recording and get either a PA speaker/powered cab for home practice, this way when I want to play louder at home for practice reasons I don't have to worry about damaging speakers because I will use a PA speaker or powered cab. Also this is kinda future proofing my set up since if I do play live I will probably look into axe fx or something similar. So if this is makes sense we have come full circle, any suggestions on good audio usb audio interfaces? (latency being the biggest factor) - I think ive got it limited down to: Komplete : Audio Interfaces : Komplete Audio 6 | Products or Tascam US-322 USB Audio Interface or Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 « Audio interface

The software I currently own is Guitar Rig 3, although I intend to upgrade this to 5, and probably purchase Peavey's "Revalver" also. As for DAW, unsure right now, need to get some advice on that to be honest (one thing which may determine which usb interface I get is software, if all other variables are eliminated, that is - for instance this comes with alot of software Komplete : Audio Interfaces : Komplete Audio 6 | Products ). I am kinda following bluesman and surfingaliens posts, but to be honest I am very new to the technology of music, but all in all I think the end point is if I am going to use amplification equipment which isn't a guitar cabinet then I need to be "careful" - to be honest, even though I am sure this is the truth I don't want to be worrying that if I buy monitors they could blow at any moment, so any concrete advice on what to get considering what I want to do would be very appreciated. I am not sure if someone answered this in a round about way or not, but how does a PA speaker and a studio monitor differ? Is it not both the job of the PA and the studio monitor to reproduce whatever signal is going into it, i.e. a flat response? Are PA speakers just more robust? (I have been looking around and alot of guitarists who use standalone fx processors, i.e. axe fx, line 6 HD, use this for live and home use, and swear by it, Alto TS112A Active PA Speaker (Single) )

Previously I had an amp which I bypassed the preamp using "kontrol rig" into the fx return (audio interface within a guitar pedal board), however both my amp and my kontrol rig broke (at different times), I would get another kontrol rig but they are discontinued, also since my amp broke I thought it would be a good opportunity to get a new system in place, one more focused on recording. I pretty much just want to record and practice at home, so the way i original thought i could do both of these at the same time was to simply get an audio interface and monitors and use my existing software (which is very good), so I could use standalone programmes for practice and use the same programmes as vst pugins in any given DAW. You bring up a good point bplexico, there are units which do the processing instead of your pc which have inbuilt usb interfaces, i.e. Line 6 pod hd, axe fx etc (with these you may as well just use a decent power amp with guitar cabs) however im not a fan of line 6/zoom/boss amp sims, and axe fx and the eleven unit is out of my budget - the more apt point is I really do like my existing software, and I also love the sound people get out of "Revalver", in my view it absolutely stomps line 6 etc so this is the route i wanted to go down, thus what I want to do is, guitar -> usb interface -> software -> usb interface -> monitors. The last part can be replaced by alot of solutions, 1) getting a regular amp and bypass the preamp stage (although this is needlessly costly), 2) studio monitors, 3) studio headphones, or 4) PA speaker(s). Hopefully this is clearer, thanks for taking an interest btw guys, its muchly appreciated.

Hi again, this is interesting, I was talking to a friend of mine, who uses PA speakers for gigging with multifx units for his guitar rig and he just suggested that there wouldn't be any reason not to use a PA speaker at home for my purposes, im guessing PA speakers are alot more rugged and would avoid the problems mentioned in this thread?

This is basically what im thinking, the set up im planning is purely for home recording and playing around with fx, I don't plan to crank the volume, I do have a question though, I was thinking of skipping the monitors for a pair of studio headphones, in terms of this discussion are there similar risks using headphones as there is with using monitors? Also as mentioned earlier would a greater size speaker in monitors help play at a "normal" volume without risk?

Thats very interesting bluesman, I will post this topic on a dedicated guitar software forum, see if this has happened to anyone. Perhaps, then, if I were to use guitar software the best output solution would be either into a "line in" on an amp (i.e. where, on some amps, they have inputs for cd players/mp3 players) or buying a power amp and using the software as a preamp and put that through a guitar cab?

Yeah I didn't think I had got what I was trying to say right, hopefully someone will explain, I have been using guitar software and been around guitar software forums for close to 6 years and have never heard of the problem thesurfingalien pointed out. Just curious really.

I think you may be right thesurfingalien, when you suggested that guitar programmes protect this from happening, you will have to excuse my absolute n00bness when it comes to questions of audio signals and whatnot, but would I be right in suggesting that a guitar straight into a guitar amp is an unbalanced signal (thus the amp differs from speakers in the way you suggested), whereas when a guitar is processed by an audio interface into a software solution and back again the audio signal isn't like the aforementioned signal path?

Those monitors look really good actually alexwgoody and they are available at a shop I shop at, I will give them some consideration. Good to know bluesman, I think I may just bite the bullet and get an M-audio fast track C400, it seems to have mostly good reviews.

Hi all, thanks for the tips and advice. Thesurfingalien, thanks for the warning, i will look into it, although I havn't heard any problems like that happening. bluesman, what sort of latency have you got with usb units such as the ones youve mentioned? Latency is probably my main concern, I have an ok spec pc (i3 2120 cpu, 4gb ram) which I think should handle things fine, but I was also wondering about PCI cards, since I know the latency of PCI is alot less than usb - although I have heard newer usb 2.0 interfaces are pretty good latency wise (are there any usb 3.0 units?).

Sorry my bad, I should of put that I am using windows. I think max I am looking to spend £250/$400 on monitors, and £150/$250 on an interface.

Hi all, I have played guitar for a long time but purely with amps and pedals etc, but good amp tones often mean high volume valve amps (which is not great for home use) and I know guitar simulation software has come along way in recent years, so I am looking for good advice on what to buy to start this route. I am looking for an audio interface for guitar and bass as well as some decent monitors so I can mess around with software like guitar rig and amplitube etc while flirting with recording. I have around £300/$500 to spend (maybe a bit more). The problem I have looking around for audio interfaces is that I want a quality interface but without bells and whistles which I do not need (since im not recording vocals, and I don't really need midi I/O either). Often models without the aforementioned functionality are just poor in general, i.e. have poor bit rate and frequency, can anyone recommend a decent interface? (I am currently considering the m-audio fast track c400 and tascam US-322 - although they both still seem somewhat overkill). I know there are many guitar orientated interfaces out there, but I can't help but be suspicious of alot of them since they often lack basic functionality which are on "normal" audio interfaces (they often only have volume knobs and thats it). However if anyone has good experiences with these I would love to hear about it. For monitors I am currently looking at a pair of KRK G2 rokit RP5's (£200/$320) or M Audio BX5 D2's (£150/$240) - I have no experience with monitors but looking around on the net for a few days has given me an abstract idea of what I should be looking for, I think, so advice here would be really appreciated too.