Hooking up stomp boxes to audio interface.

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tranquillant

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The title says it all.
Is this a good idea? I have yet to try this as I've gotten my tones from software simulators.
 
You can certainly try it.
The pedals are designed to go into an amp (duh), so I'd plug them into a direct/instrument input rather than a line input.

I expect you'd want to run them into an amp simulator.

How good or bad it sounds is for you to find out. ;)
 
do you mean to run a recorded sound out of the interface, through the effect(s) and back in? That's probably going to be a low impedance, line level (and possibly balanced). Most guitar effects are expecting a high impedance, instrument (low) level, unbalanced signal like what would be coming from a guitar, but some are flexible in that regard (except they're probably all unbalanced).

So it's kind of a crapshoot - I don't think there's much risk of damaging anything (but...) - if you can, read the manual - some of my effects straight up say they won't work at line level.
 
antichef said:
do you mean to run a recorded sound out of the interface, through the effect(s) and back in? That's probably going to be a low impedance, line level (and possibly balanced). Most guitar effects are expecting a high impedance, instrument (low) level, unbalanced signal like what would be coming from a guitar, but some are flexible in that regard (except they're probably all unbalanced).

So it's kind of a crapshoot - I don't think there's much risk of damaging anything (but...) - if you can, read the manual - some of my effects straight up say they won't work at line level.
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I was thinking more like connecting them like to my amp...first my guitar into the stompbox and from the stombox into HiZ input of the audio interface and into the recording software?
 
tranquillant said:
I was thinking more like connecting them like to my amp...first my guitar into the stompbox and from the stombox into HiZ input of the audio interface and into the recording software?
Click to expand...
Oh - that should work fine :) I guess different amps have different input impedance tolerances, and who knows what the exact specifications are on your interface, but in any event, I wouldn't hesitate to try - should be pretty much what you expect.
 
tranquillant said:
I was thinking more like connecting them like to my amp...first my guitar into the stompbox and from the stombox into HiZ input of the audio interface and into the recording software?
Click to expand...

Try it and see. But why?
 
tranquillant said:
I don't know, haven't tried it before as this all is quite new to me fiddling around with audio interfaces and digital recording equipment.
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If you're wanting to use them with your Guitar Rig software, I'd say try it and see, but I think you're going to be better off using GR's effects in the software before the amps.
 
Greg_L said:
If you're wanting to use them with your Guitar Rig software, I'd say try it and see, but I think you're going to be better off using GR's effects in the software before the amps.
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You're probably right.
 
Pedals to interface to software recorder often means fizzy if you're working with ditortion & fuzz.
Older pedals aren't built for the interface hook up. More modern ones are better with cab sims and so forth.
The best advice you've had is try it & see.
So TRY IT & SEE!
 
rayc said:
Pedals to interface to software recorder often means fizzy if you're working with ditortion & fuzz.
Click to expand...
That's pretty close to exactly what the first stage of any amplifier would hear. It's the fact that we insist on running those amps through speakers which can only be called "woofers" which makes distorted guitar listenable at all.

Conversely, if you low pass the distorted signal (the way a speaker emulated output would) and then run it into an amp or software amp sim which rolls off that high frequency info again, you could end up with a kind of dull, dark tone.
 
Does your amp have a line out? If so go guitar-stompbox-amp-line out-interface. This will be the optimal solution.

If you go guitar-stompbox-interface you may the following problems:

Instrument vs line level (which may not be a problem if your interface has enough gain) but the trade off is noise.

Impedance mismatch between the stompbox and the interface. More often than not, stompboxes have a volume knob directly on the output of 100k or so. You interface likely has in input impedance of 50-100k. You need to check that. You may not have a problem if you crank the stompbox up all the way. But then you still have the level mismatch. If your interface has an instrument input, use that.

Otherwise, like others have said, try it out. If it sounds ok to you that's all that matters.
 
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