Will a headphone amp allow me to...

3

357mag

New member
Right now, when I record another track to a project, I play the pre-recorded track in Reaper(that comes through my desktop speakers)while listening to my live guitar sound through my headphones which are attached to my POD X3. What I'm doing is I put the headphones kinda halfway on my head, not completely covering my ears, so I can hear both my live guitar through the phones, and the pre-recorded track through the speakers.

The reason I have to do this cuz S/PDIF is one-way only. It only allows the signal from the POD into my sound card and Reaper. It doesn't allow sound going back the other way.

Awhile back, someone told me a headphone mixer will allow me to hear the pre-recorded track in my headphones at the same time as my live guitar sound. So I'm thinking about investing in one.

I tried plugging the phones into my sound card awhile back, but from what I recall the sound of my guitar changed.

So I was wondering if any of you can verify that by using a headphone mixer/amp, it will allow me to hear the pre-recorded track along with my live guitar sound through the phones.
 
It all depends on how you hook it up. You need to be able to send separate audio channels to the headphone amp simultaneously. If you don't have the routing capability to begin with, a headphone amp won't make you any better off than you are now.

I suppose you could send the live guitar signal from the POD to the headphone mixer. Also send the signal from your sound card to another channel in the headphone mixer (instead of the speakers.) If you can get both channels to play in both ears, it may work. (This really isn't the right way but...)

What is stopping you from sending the guitar sound to the computer speakers along with the playback track? Can Reaper not monitor live tracks while recording?

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You should already be able to hear your guitar, along with the pre-recorded tracks in reaper, simultaneously as you record.

You don't need a headphone amp or a mixer for that.

If for some reason you can't already monitor both ... or if your guitar sound is "changing" as you put it, then either something is seriously wrong with your audio interface, or you don't fully understand your system and aren't using it properly. I would suspect the latter.

The only thing a headphone amp will do is take what you already have coming out of your monitors ... and allow you to shoot that out to multiple headphones (kind of like taking a problem and multiplying it). Something that would only be useful if you were tracking a full band or small group of musicians simultaneously.
 
Daisy said:
You should already be able to hear your guitar, along with the pre-recorded tracks in reaper, simultaneously as you record.

You don't need a headphone amp or a mixer for that.

If for some reason you can't already monitor both ... or if your guitar sound is "changing" as you put it, then either something is seriously wrong with your audio interface, or you don't fully understand your system and aren't using it properly. I would suspect the latter.

The only thing a headphone amp will do is take what you already have coming out of your monitors ... and allow you to shoot that out to multiple headphones (kind of like taking a problem and multiplying it). Something that would only be useful if you were tracking a full band or small group of musicians simultaneously.
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He is using the heaphone jack coming from the POD, not from his computer. And he doesn't have a return hooked up from his computer. Of course Reaper can do this, but the OP doesn't want to use the USB hookup (for some strange reason I still don't understand).
 
I do not have a headphone jack on my speakers so that won't work. I do not have a headphone jack on my computer so that won't work. I just found out I can download the USB drivers and burn them to disk, which would save me some time and monkey business. If I install the USB drivers and hook up my POD by way of USB, then I can have two-way communication easily.

But if I wasn't going to use USB, and just use S/PDIF or analog guitar cables, then there is no way so far that I've found that I can get playback coming through my phones while the phones are connected to my POD.

I did order a small mixer though, which should allow me to do that. Plus the mixer will allow me to mic my amp if the need should arise in the future.
 
I guess I do have a headphone jack on the back of my machine. I hooked up a couple of guitar cords to the inputs of my computer. Then plugged the phones into the headphone jack of the computer. Then tried to play back my guitar track. Didn't hear anything coming through the phones.

But I don't have the onboard sound driver installed either. Plus I have the onboard sound disabled in the BIOS.
 
I installed the driver for my onboard sound plus I went into the BIOS and enabled it. Then I plugged my headphones into the headphone jack on the back of my computer. Still nothing. I even disabled the E-MU card. Still nothing.

Other than installing the USB drivers and cable, or using a mixer, I don't think there is another way to do it.
 
I got the E-MU 1212M. Yeah and my POD does not have any inputs. The only inputs on my POD are the guitar input and the headphone input. That is all. So it seems to me that for the playback track to come out of the soundcard and through the cables and into the POD and then finally into my phones, I would have to have a cable connected from the output of the soundcard and into an input of the POD. Since the POD does not have any inputs like this, it won't work.

Unless I use USB of course. That will work, since USB is two-way communication.
 
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