Using Macbook Pro as guitar amp?

[Atty]

Possible? Realistic replacement? I want to get another Electric guitar (I stopped playing electric years ago, using only acoustic now) but I don't want to buy an amp too (at least for a while) so I'm curious if this is a viable solution.

If it is, are there programs to make effects and what-not?

 

[herm0016]

a notebook can not amplify the signal from the guitar.
you can purchase a system like M audio to pre-amp the signal to your computer to record it or play it back live from speakers hooked up to the computer.

I have never used this to do anything live, but it works great for recording and then production. I am not even sure you can use it for live playback with processing.

 

[Fritzo]

As long as you have an Intel based Mac, you'll want this: http://www.amazon.com/Line-6-99-072-.../dp/B0000AJQ42

 

[The Boston Dangler]

a notebook can not amplify the signal from the guitar.
you can purchase a system like M audio to pre-amp the signal to your computer to record it or play it back live from speakers hooked up to the computer.

I have never used this to do anything live, but it works great for recording and then production. I am not even sure you can use it for live playback with processing.

that box looks pretty sweet

 

[Arkaign]

Speaking second-hand here, that's a handy thing, but even a cheapish pawn-shop classic amp will give you a better feel and sound than trying to cycle it through a computer and through typical computer speakers.

 

[brblx]

i wouldn't use a macbook pro as a macbook pro.

 

[silverpig]

I used to play around with stuff like this and have since my old 1GHz Tbird system. There is some delay between what you play and what comes out, which is terribly annoying. It has gotten much better, but I haven't been able to play live and keep straight time.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

If you have an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch, Amplitube for those devices works well and you can plug it into headphones or any sort of speakers. That said, you can get a decent small amp like the Vox VT30 for less than $200, and it will be much more useful as, well, an amp.

 

[ethebubbeth]

I use a cheap phonograph pre-amp to plug my guitar into the line-in jack on my media pc. I then use ASIO4All with VSTHost to run plugins such as studio devil through my home theater setup. The latency with my onboard audio is ~8ms.

It's gimpy, but I'm not a good enough player for a decent amp anyways. I'm sure the whole thing would be vastly improved with the M Audio mentioned earlier in the thread. It should also have better ASIO support that would further decrease latency as well.

 

[duragezic]

There's software only solutions I've tried on my PC, and stuff like GuitarPort (which I've never used) but for the $100 it takes to get GuitarPort, why not just get a regular amp? Especially used... I bought a Carvin SX-100 for like $150 used 5 years ago.

In 2005 in college, I wrote a small article on ReValver Live, which is a program that acts as an amplifier. It was only the demo so it had a beep every 30 seconds. I just listened to a few samples I recorded for the assignment, and it sounds OK. But there is a delay of like 80ms. If you play something really fast with short notes, I remember having trouble with it picking it all up.

In the review of it, I mentioned I had used something called Guitar FX years before and it wasn't nearly as good. Also there is something called Guitar Rig which seems to have hardware now but I think there used to be a software only version.

I'm sure if you bought something nice like Guitar Rig, it would be better than the trial thing I had, but then you're looking at $50-100 (like GuitarPort) and while it would be more flexible, I can't see it sounding anywhere near as good as an amp.

 

[herm0016]

I use a cheap phonograph pre-amp to plug my guitar into the line-in jack on my media pc.

a phono pre-amp is designed to apply the correct equilization to the output of a turn table. this will make your guitar sound quite a bit different than it should.

 

[herm0016]

that box looks pretty sweet

we used the fast track pro with logic for our mobile recording rig, it worked great for small bands and such with simple stereo outputs from the console. we used 2 of the 8 channel versions if we wanted each channel separate.

 

[silverpig]

a phono pre-amp is designed to apply the correct equilization to the output of a turn table. this will make your guitar sound quite a bit different than it should.

Isn't that kind of the point of virtually everything you plug your guitar into?

 

[freegeeks]

get a guitarport, it's great fun

 

[dwell]

Garageband has a ton of amp and effects. Comes free with new Macs too.

 

[gorcorps]

I used to play around with stuff like this and have since my old 1GHz Tbird system. There is some delay between what you play and what comes out, which is terribly annoying. It has gotten much better, but I haven't been able to play live and keep straight time.

This depends quite a bit of the software, and of course your CPU. I have something similar to the M-audio box posted above, but mine is a Line 6. Using the Line 6 Gearbox software there's absolutely no lag at all. There's a very slight hint of lag if using Guitar Rig, and Revavler MK III (or w/e it's called) has really bad lag to where I can't even use it.