Guitar effects?

[greendog]

I'm kind of new to the Cakewalk software and I need to know if there is any kind of after market plug in that I can use (Software-wise) to get guitar effects (i.e. Distortion, chorus, delay, etc) that I can hear while I'm recording and not after my recording. I want to be able to hear the effects as I play. Please let me know if there is anything I can get. Also, if you need to know I have a stock sound card in my computer I believe it's a sound blaster live. I don't want to have to go out and buy a neew card or anything. Thanks! Any help with this will be greatly appreciated.

-= Bill =-

[ChorazaiM]

Excuse any typos - haven't had my morning coffee yet, and neither has my spell-checker...

If you're looking specifically for "guitar effects", your best bet would be either Amplitube or Revalver - I prefer Amplitube myself as it seems a lot more professional, but - and this is a prettty big but - there's zero chance you'll be able to play it in real time with a stock (or SB) audio card - there will be a noticable delay between when you hit a note and when it sounds through your speakers. You basically have 2 choices here if you want to stay in the software realm (as opposed to buying a POD or some other hardware based solution):

1) buy a new low-latency soundcard. Cheapest one I can think of is the Audiotrax Maya44, somewhere around $100US.

2) record clean and then apply effects afterwards to your tracks. You'll have no latency (delay) as you wont be running any actual effetcs as you record, but neither will you be able to hear the effects as you play them.

Hope that helps. I opted for option 1 myself not that long ago and went with the Maya44 - again, lowest priced low-latency card I could find. Doesn't have 24/96, but that wasn't something I required - plus it's got 4 inouts to boot - too bad the mic pre-amps in the card are complete shite (good thing I have a hardware mixer for that).

Anyway, hope this was of some help. Check out the Amplitibe (http://www.amplitube.com) and ReValver (http://www.alienconnections.com) sites fro mp3 samples of what type(s) of sounds you can get from these programs. Again, there are other programs that do the same thing, but those 2 are my personal favorites (until AmpFarm gets ported (yeah, right!)).

[bamboo]

I can only add a couple words to the exhaustive reply above: 1)the latency depends on the drivers of your soundcard rather than on the sequencer you use (Cakewalk - Cubase, etc.) and 2) there's a new guitar FX processor - iZone Trash, which is even better than the 2 mentioned above (strictly IMHO).

my $0.02

[ChorazaiM]

Drivers definately impact the performance (a good card with bad drivers is useless) - didn't think to mention this as I don't believe he'll find any drivers out there that will give him the low latency he needs.

I haven't tried iZotope Trash (yet!), so I can't comment, but the blurbs on the website look promising - although it (as iZone themselves claim) is far more than just an amp/guitar sim. Have to see if I can nad a demo version of this...

Just to be thorough, here's a link so all 3 can be compared:

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/trash/

[moskus]

General: http://home.no.net/magnesiu/cakewalkfaq/

This issue: http://home.no.net/magnesiu/cakewalk...monitoring.htm

Return to the ever-developing Cakewalk FAQ!

[ChorazaiM]

Hey Moskus - this is off topic, but : what are the pre-amps on your INCA88 like? Are they the same ones as the MAYA44? I found the MAYA44 ones to be utter crap IMO.

[moskus]

Actually, I've never tested them...

I bought my Soundcraft F1 at the same time as my Inca88, so I've never had the need for testing them... But the card is great!

[ChorazaiM]

Soundcraft F1 - nice little mixer ;] I've got a Behringer MX1804 - it does the job nicely...anyway, with the mixer, there's no need for the pre-amps on th ecard, but I decided to test them anyway as I remember reading some review where they said they were horrible - and they were right!

[moskus]

Well, it's not a very highend card, so I wouldn't expect the best. That's why I got the Soundcraft...